Associate Forward Deployed Engineer, Handshake
$125-145k
+ Equity
5 days a week in office
The career platform for Gen Z
Be an early applicant
The career platform for Gen Z
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$125-145k
+ Equity
5 days a week in office
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
- 0–2 years of professional software engineering experience (internships, co-ops, or project-based work count)
- Familiarity with ReactJS and TypeScript, with an eye for detail, usability, and accessibility
- Foundational understanding of relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL) and data modeling concepts
- Some exposure to cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP) and deployment pipelines
- Passion for clean, maintainable code and building reliable, performant systems
- Strong communication skills and a willingness to collaborate across technical and non-technical stakeholders
- Comfortable working in a fast-paced, dynamic environment with a hunger to learn and grow
Desirable
- Coursework, projects, or internship experience involving LLMs or other AI-powered products
- Familiarity with component libraries, design systems, or building reusable interfaces
- Interest in or exposure to performance optimization and scaling of frontend or full-stack applications
What the job involves
- As an Associate Forward Deployed Engineer, you'll work alongside senior engineers and directly with our customers, leading AI labs, to help solve their most pressing technical challenges
- You'll support the design and deployment of solutions that impact customer workflows and model performance, working across the stack, shipping quickly, and iterating based on real-world feedback
- This is a fast-paced, high-exposure role where you'll learn by doing in ambiguous, constantly evolving environments
- This is a unique opportunity early in your career to combine hands-on engineering with direct customer engagement, building not just the "what" but the "how" of our most important deployments
- Partner with AI labs and internal engineering and operations teams to help identify needs, gather requirements, and support solution design
- Work on custom asks from customers to help rapidly prototype and deploy tailored solutions that address unique, high-impact challenges
- Tackle complex technical problems with support from senior engineers, taking increasing ownership of delivery from concept through deployment
- Rapidly prototype, test, and iterate on tools in response to real-time feedback
- Contribute to architectural discussions and help establish best practices for reliability, scalability, and security in high-impact deployments
- Document solutions and help create technical playbooks for repeatable, scalable deployment processes
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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