Machine Learning Engineer, Handshake
$151-189k
+ Equity
The career platform for Gen Z
Be an early applicant
The career platform for Gen Z
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$151-189k
+ Equity
1001+ 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
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, or a related technical field
- 1–3 years of industry or research experience in machine learning or a related area
- Proficiency in Python and hands-on experience with ML frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow
- Solid understanding of core ML concepts: ranking, classification, regression, model evaluation, and validation
- Familiarity with software engineering best practices including version control, testing, and code reviews
- Experience with SQL and data analysis techniques
Desirable
- MS or PhD degree in a relevant field
- Experience in applied ML in domains such as recommendations, personalization, search, NLP, or graph-based learning
- Familiarity with generative recommendation approaches — including semantic item tokenization (RQ-VAE, residual quantization), unified retrieval-ranking architectures, or sequential recommendation models — even if through research or coursework rather than production
- Exposure to preference-aligned training objectives (RLHF, DPO, reward modeling) and interest in applying them to multi-objective recommendation settings
- Hands-on experience with Graph Neural Networks or graph-based representation learning for user or item modeling
- Familiarity with dense retrieval, two-tower architectures, or embedding-based candidate generation at scale
- Experience with ML lifecycle management including experiment tracking, feature engineering pipelines, and production monitoring
- Experience with cloud infrastructure such as GCP, AWS, or Azure in the context of ML workflows
- Publications or contributions at venues such as SIGIR, KDD, WSDM, RecSys, NeurIPS, or ICML — particularly in retrieval, ranking, or generative modeling
- Strong communication skills with the ability to present technical work clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences
What the job involves
- Handshake is hiring a Machine Learning Engineer I for the Network & Core Relevance team
- The recommender systems playbook that dominated the last decade is being rewritten, and we're hiring the engineers who will lead that rewrite
- We're rebuilding our core discovery engine around generative recommendation architectures: unified retrieval and ranking under shared transformer backbones, semantic item tokenization, graph-aware representation learning, and preference-aligned training objectives
- This is the most significant architectural shift in recommender systems in a generation, and it's happening in production
- In this role, you'll take end-to-end ownership of ML models and features that determine how students and employers find each other
- You'll work on hard problems — behavioral signal sparsity in a search domain, cold-start at institutional scale, multi-objective optimization across a three-sided marketplace — and you'll be expected to take big swings on them
- Owner: Take end-to-end ownership of ML models and features — from problem framing and experimentation through deployment and production monitoring — with growing autonomy over time
- Innovator: Develop and iterate on machine learning models that improve core relevance and network-driven signals, including graph-based and embedding-based approaches
- Collaborator: Partner closely with senior engineers, data scientists, and product managers to design experiments, interpret results, and translate findings into product impact
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 17M 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
- Health Insurance: Comprehensive medical , dental, and vision coverage
- Fertility and family forming: Through a partnership, Handshake offers comprehensive family benefits, including infertility treatments and a $15K stipend, to its employees.
- LGTBQ+ coverage: All medical plans cover transgender services.
- Mental health: Discounts on a variety of wellness apps and an Employee Assistance Program with access to five free counseling sessions.
- Tax savings: Tax-advantaged benefits to save money on healthcare, dependent care, and other expenses.
- Learning & development: Employees are provided with an annual stipend to use towards professional development, career development workshops, manager trainings, and 1-on-1 coaching through external partnerships
- Community leader support: Employee Resource Group leaders are compensated with a quarterly bonus for the high-impact work the role requires
- Parental leave: Leaves of 16 weeks for birth-giving parents and 10 weeks for non-birth-giving parents; the policy applies to adoptions as well. Handshake also partners to provide one-on-one coaching on preparing for leave and coming back from leave
- Flexible time off: No accrued time off or waiting period to take vacation. Two paid flexible holiday days off to observe holidays that closely align with religious, cultural, and personal needs
- Sabbatical: Paid six-week sabbatical to recharge and reset beginning at six years of continuous, full-time employment, and every four years thereafter
- Volunteer time off: Two days off for social and civil activism, volunteer work, and/or any related activities, including attending and participating in protests
- Life & disability insurance: Essential benefits and automatic coverage with basic life insurance, plus short-term and long-term disability coverage.
- 401k match: Dollar-for-dollar match up to 1% of pay, with a max of $1,200 per year.
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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