About Handshake

Handshake is the career network for the AI economy. 20 million knowledge workers, 1,600 educational institutions, 1 million employers (including 100% of the Fortune 50), and every foundational AI lab trust Handshake to power career discovery, hiring, and upskilling, from freelance AI training gigs to first internships to full-time careers and beyond. This unique value is leading to unparalleled growth; in 2025, we tripled our ARR at scale.

Why join Handshake now:

• Shape how every career evolves in the AI economy, at global scale, with impact your friends, family and peers can see and feel

• Work hand-in-hand with world-class AI labs, Fortune 500 partners and the world’s top educational institutions

• Join a team with leadership from Scale AI, Meta, xAI, Notion, Coinbase, and Palantir, among others

• Build a massive, fast-growing business with billions in revenue

About the role

Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) is the engineering team that unblocks high-priority, customer-facing work for Handshake AI's most strategic partners. FDEs are technical builders: they ship end-to-end solutions in close collaboration with researchers, operators, and partner technical teams.

As a Tech Lead Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering, you are first and foremost a builder. You'll spend the majority of your time writing code, designing systems, and shipping solutions directly alongside customers — while also owning the technical direction and day-to-day leadership of a small team of FDEs. This is a player-coach role: the best person for this job is someone who would be frustrated behind a desk managing full-time and wants to stay close to the craft.

This role is ideal for a senior engineer ready to take on their first or second management scope without leaving the work behind — someone who leads by example, builds trust through technical credibility, and creates structure without bureaucracy.

Location: San Francisco, CA | 5 days/week in-office

What you'll do

• Own and ship end-to-end technical solutions directly for Handshake AI's highest-priority customer engagements.

• Design and build integrations, tooling, APIs, and workflows in close collaboration with partner technical teams, researchers, and operators.

• Serve as the primary technical point of contact for key accounts — understanding their systems deeply and delivering solutions that work in production.

• Write production-quality code and architect systems that are reliable, observable, secure, and maintainable.

• Manage and develop a small team of 3–5 Forward Deployed Engineers — set expectations, unblock, and grow them.

• Own technical quality across the team's engagements — review work, raise the bar, and ensure strong engineering fundamentals.

• Help prioritize and triage across competing requests; flag capacity and scope issues early.

• Identify patterns across customer engagements and build the reusable components that scale the team's output.

Must haves

• 6+ years of software engineering experience, with meaningful depth in backend, fullstack, or systems work.

• 2+ years in a customer-facing or field engineering role (e.g., forward deployed, solutions engineering, field engineering, customer-embedded product development).

• Experience as a tech lead or TLM — setting technical direction for a team, not just owning your own work.

• 1–2 years managing a small team of engineers (3–6); comfortable with feedback, growth conversations, and performance.

• Must be someone who codes regularly and wants to keep coding

• Ability to translate technical tradeoffs into business decisions; comfortable presenting options and recommendations to both technical and non-technical partners.

• Strong stakeholder management skills; builds trust quickly with external partners and communicates clearly under pressure.

• Strong instincts on triage and prioritization across multiple concurrent engagements.

Nice to haves

• Experience with AI/ML product integrations or production reliability in AI systems.

• Familiarity with distributed systems and backend architecture at scale.

• Experience building reusable platforms or internal tooling from bespoke customer solutions.

• Background working with operations-heavy or research-adjacent organizations.

Why join now

• Stay close to the craft while growing as a leader — this role is built for engineers who don't want to stop building.

• Work on genuinely hard problems at the frontier of applied AI with world-class labs and partners.

• Join early and help shape how the FDE org scales — your patterns become the playbook.

• Direct, visible impact on customer outcomes and Handshake's most strategic relationships.

Perks

Handshake delivers benefits that help you feel supported—and thrive at work and in life.

The below benefits are for full-time US employees.

🎯 Ownership: Equity in a fast-growing company

💰 Financial Wellness: 401(k) match, competitive compensation, financial coaching

🍼 Family Support: Paid parental leave, fertility benefits, parental coaching

💝 Wellbeing: Medical, dental, and vision, mental health support, $500 wellness stipend

📚 Growth: $2,000 learning stipend, ongoing development

💻 Remote & Office: Internet, commuting, and free lunch/gym in our SF office

🏝 Time Off: Flexible PTO, 15 holidays + 2 flex days

🤝 Connection: Team outings & referral bonuses

Explore our mission, values, and comprehensive US benefits at joinhandshake.com/careers.