AI Research & Product Strategy Lead, Handshake
Handshake AI
$200-300k
+ Equity
5 days a week in office
College career network and job board
Be an early applicant
College career network and job board
501-1000 employees
Be an early applicant
$200-300k
+ Equity
5 days a week in office
501-1000 employees
Company mission
To democratize access to opportunity and ensure any student can build a great career no matter who they know, where they live or what school they attend.
Role
Who you are
- AI/ML Expertise: Advanced degree (PhD preferred) or equivalent experience in Machine Learning, Computer Science, or related fields
- Hands-on experience with LLMs and proficiency in frameworks like PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow—so you can meaningfully scope and evaluate technical approaches
- Track record of publishing in top ML venues (ACL, EMNLP, NAACL, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, COLM, etc.) or equivalent real-world research impact
- Customer-Facing & Strategic Mindset: Exceptional communication skills, comfortable presenting complex technical topics to audiences ranging from C-suite to PhD-level researchers
- Ability to empathize with customer needs, influence decision-makers, and drive internal alignment on strategic priorities
- Problem-Solving in Ambiguous Environments: Proven capacity to define problems, propose solutions, and execute effectively in fast-moving, high-stakes contexts
- Strong bias toward action and a willingness to innovate beyond traditional product playbooks
- Technical Chops: Comfort debugging ML models and iterating on experiments at scale
- Familiarity with cloud technology stacks (AWS, GCP, or similar) and ability to handle data workflows or ML pipelines in a production environment
What the job involves
- We’re seeking a hybrid researcher and product strategist—someone who speaks the language of cutting-edge AI labs and advanced research teams yet can translate their needs into actionable product roadmaps
- Your mission: build deep relationships with technical buyers at top research labs and guide Handshake’s most ambitious AI-driven product initiatives
- Own Relationships with Top AI Researchers & Technical Buyers: Serve as Handshake’s primary liaison to leaders at frontier AI labs
- Maintain active communication channels—so that when they face a critical AI talent challenge, you’re their first call
- Be Our Research & Customer Whisperer: Dig beyond the surface of customer requests to uncover unarticulated needs
- Bridge the gap between technical buyers and our product team, ensuring we solve the right problems before customers even realize they have them
- Solve the Hardest Product Challenges in AI Talent: Define and prioritize roadmaps addressing tough questions like “How do we QA superhuman-level reasoning?”
- Collaborate with engineering and operations to scope, prototype, and launch solutions that push the boundaries of AI evaluation and deployment
- Customer-Centric Product Strategy: Translate AI research challenges into clear product objectives, ensuring we target high-impact areas
- Technical Research & Prototyping: Stay current with the AI/ML research landscape—particularly large language models (LLMs) and agent-based systems—and turn cutting-edge ideas into proof-of-concepts
- Cross-Functional Leadership: Work with engineering, operations, and business teams to deliver end-to-end solutions, from concept through production
Our take
The three founders of Handshake established their company in an attempt to eliminate inequality and make the student hiring landscape fairer. The Handshake platform acts as a LinkedIn for college students, pairing students from every walk of life with more than 650K employers, including the entire Fortune 500, which includes Google and Nike.
The graduate recruitment platform is open to any student with a valid @.edu email address, with more than 12 million active users from thousands of colleges and universities. With a student-first philosophy, the company generates revenue from both universities and employers rather than students.
Valued at $3.5B, Handshake has gained traction in a competitive market, although it has strong competition from recruiting giants LinkedIn and Indeed. It stands out, however, by helping students build new relationships and skills, rather than simply making connections to people they already know.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
2% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 7 rounds)
Jan 2022
$200m
SERIES F
May 2021
$80m
SERIES E
Total funding: $434m
Company benefits
- đź’°Equity and ownership in a fast-growing company
- 🍼16 Weeks of paid parental leave for birth giving parents & 10 weeks of paid parental leave for non-birth giving parents
- đź’ťComprehensive medical, dental, and vision policies including LGTBQ+ Coverage. We also provide resources for Mental Health Assistance, Employee Assistance Programs and counseling support
- đź’»Handshake offers $500/ÂŁ360 home office stipend for you to spend during your first 3 months to create a productive and comfortable workspace at home
- đź“šGenerous learning & development opportunities and an annual $2,000/ÂŁ1,500 stipend for you to grow your skills and career
- 🏦401k Match: Handshake offers a dollar-for-dollar match on 1% of deferred salary, up to a maximum of $1,200 per year
- 🏝 All full-time US-based Handshakers are eligible for our flexible time off policy to get out and see the world. In addition, we offer 8 standardized holidays, and 2 additional days of flexible holiday time off. Lastly, we have a Summer and Winter #ShakeBreak, two one-week periods of Collective Time Off
Company HQ
Financial District, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Garrett Lord
(Co-Founder & CEO)Majored in Computer Science at Michigan Technological University. Interned at Palantir Technologies before co-founding Handshake in 2012.
Ben Christensen
(Co-Founder)Graduated from Michigan Technological University with a degree in Computer Networking & Systems Administration. Interned at Target and worked as a Developer at Up and Running Software. Was part of Arbor Networks' ASERT Security Research team.
Scott Ringwelski
(Co-Founder)Attained a degree in Computer Software Engineering from Michigan Technological University. Co-founded Handshake in 2012.
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