Handshake

AI

ForwardDeployedEngineer,HandshakeAIEnterprise

$157–175k San Francisco, California, United States FULL TIME
Market Sentiment
HIGH DEMAND

Neural analysis suggests this role is
optimal for Entry candidates.

The Brief

“Forward Deployed Engineer, Handshake AI Enterprise at Handshake. Skills: AI agents, production-grade AI agents, agent architectures, evals, AI performance. Embed directly inside enterprise customer environments. learn each customer's business deeply”

What You'll Achieve.

measurably change how they operate; iterate and hill-climb until performance actually moves; build AI that keeps getting better; ship cohesive, reliable solutions; scale output without sacrificing quality

Industry & Context.

AI
Problems you'll solve

systems thinking — you can zoom out to the business problem and zoom in to the technical solution without losing either thread

Eligibility Requirements

5 days / week in-office, enterprise security requirements, VPC deployments, on-prem configurations

What They're Looking For.

Must Have

1-4+ years of engineering experience, full-stack with backend depth, Real-world experience building and shipping AI applications in production, understanding of agent architectures, evals, and how to measure and systematically improve AI performance, Comfort working directly with enterprise customers in ambiguous, high-stakes environments, systems thinking, High ownership mentality, communication skills

Nice to Have

Background at a company with a forward deployment or field engineering model, Experience building multi-agent systems in production, Domain expertise in a specific enterprise vertical (recruiting, finance, ops, legal, etc.), Familiarity with enterprise security requirements, VPC deployments, or on-prem configurations, History of building evals infrastructure or AI quality measurement tooling

What You'll Do.

Embed directly inside enterprise customer environments

learn each customer's business deeply

translate that understanding into production-grade AI agents

defining the solution

building and deploying agents

iterating until performance actually moves

become a genuine domain expert in your customer's vertical

use that expertise to build AI that keeps getting better

Embed directly with enterprise customers as part of a small deployment team

developing deep understanding of their business and workflows

Define AI-driven solutions based on real business needs

Build and deploy production-grade agents tailored to specific customer use cases

owning end-to-end delivery

Design and run evals to measure agent iterate and hill-climb until results move

Become a domain expert in your customer's vertical and use that expertise to build better AI over time

Work closely with Product and Platform engineers on your team to ship cohesive

Establish engineering best practices

and reusable frameworks

Surface insights from deployments that inform Handshake's platform and product roadmap

How You'll Work.

Team & Collaboration

part of a small, expert team; Work closely with Product and Platform engineers on your team

Communication Scope

communication skills; in the room with senior stakeholders regularly; need to earn their trust quickly

Process & Methodology

owning end-to-end delivery

Full Job Description

ABOUT HANDSHAKE Handshake 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 About Handshake AI Human data is the core infrastructure to AI advancement. Frontier AI labs currently improve model capabilities with various data-intensive post-training techniques. We believe that data spend for AI training will increase by 3-5x in the next few years and continue for much longer as models take on new domains. Handshake AI supports all of the frontier AI labs, working on their most complex data at the largest scale. ABOUT THE ROLE As a Forward Deployed Engineer at Handshake AI Enterprise, you'll embed directly inside enterprise customer environments as part of a small, expert team. You'll learn each customer's business deeply — their workflows, their bottlenecks, where the real leverage is — and translate that understanding into production-grade AI agents that measurably change how they operate. This isn't an implementation or consulting role. You'll own the full stack: defining the solution, building and deploying agents, designing evals, and itera

Free ATS check

Applying for this Forward Deployed Engineer, Handshake AI Enterprise role?

Most applicants get filtered before a human reads their resume. See if yours makes the cut.

How to Apply on Ashby

  • Ashby is a fast modern ATS — most applications take under 3 minutes.
  • The resume parser is strong; verify parsed experience dates and job titles.
  • Custom screening questions are often scored algorithmically — answer completely.
  • Location field affects geo-based screening; use your actual metro area.

ANONYMOUS · UNFILTERED

What do employees actually say about Handshake?

Real rants from real employees. Read before you apply.

Read Company Rants →