Senior Manager, Engineering

About this role

About HandshakeHandshake was founded on a simple belief that everyone deserves a path to a great career, regardless of where they went to school or who they know. Today, we power 25 million job seekers, 1 million+ employers, and 1,600 educational institutions. In 2025, we started Handshake AI and built the fastest-growing AI data business in history. We work directly with frontier AI lab researchers to create evaluations, publish benchmarks, and push the boundary of data. We’ve grown from $0 to ~$1B run rate and pay ~$60M to over 30K individuals every month. 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

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

Work together with engineers, scientists, operators, and more from Palantir, Meta, Scale AI, and former YC founders

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

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

About the Role We’re looking for an Engineering Manager to lead a high-impact engineering team within Handshake Careers. You’ll own the engineering of a new, agent-first product for industry recruiting: the future of how companies find, evaluate, and reach experienced talent. Recruiting teams work through hours of manual searching, filtering, and outreach. Our product replaces that with an agent. A recruiter describes who they need, or uploads a job description, and the agent builds an ideal candidate profile, finds matches, refines results from feedback, and drafts and sends personalized outreach. You’ll lead the founding team, a mix of senior, staff, principal, and mid-level engineers. The product is self-serve from day one, starting free and growing into paid and enterprise tiers.

What you’ll doLead and grow a new engineering team, including senior, staff, and principal engineers, through hiring, coaching, and career development

Own the end-to-end product: sign-up and onboarding, agent-driven search and calibration, shortlists, analytics, and tiering

Shape the architecture early. Review technical designs and proposals and set direction

Drive execution on an ambitious timeline across a large project, and make clear trade-offs with product and design on scope versus speed

Partner closely with product and design, and with the teams behind outreach, candidate data, and AI/ML search and retrieval

Establish the team’s engineering culture, processes, and operating rhythm from the ground up

What we’re looking for3+ years experience managing engineering teams, including teams that include senior and staff engineers

Strong people management: high EQ, empathy, and a record of growing engineers’ careers

Deep technical background. You can contribute to architecture and evaluate trade-offs on a new system, even if you no longer code day to day

A track record of delivering large, cross-functional projects on aggressive timelines, with good judgment about what to cut

BonusZero-to-one experience: building a new product or major surface from scratch, ideally at a startup, a mid-size company, or a product-led team inside a larger one

Experience with AI/LLM-powered products, agents, or evaluation systems

Experience with self-serve or product-led growth products (free-to-paid, usage-based limits) is a plus

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, wellness stipend 📚 Growth: 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.