Forward Deployed Engineer (Handshake AI)

• As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you’ll work at the intersection of our engineering organization and our most strategic customers, including leading AI labs

• You’ll contribute to the full lifecycle of high-impact deployments—helping scope technical requirements, building and iterating on solutions that directly improve customer workflows and model performance

• You’ll operate across the stack in ambiguous, fast-changing environments, working closely with senior engineers to shape how we approach our most critical partnerships

• This is a unique opportunity to combine hands-on technical work with direct customer engagement—learning how to deliver at the highest level while growing your skills in a forward-deployed environment

• Partner with AI labs and cross-functional stakeholders to understand technical challenges, help translate requirements into actionable engineering plans, and contribute to alignment across teams

• Build and iterate on tailored, production-grade solutions for complex customer needs, often with guidance from senior engineers and minimal existing playbooks

• Participate actively in code reviews and contribute to best practices for forward-deployed work

• Contribute to architectural discussions around reliability, scalability, and security, and help implement repeatable deployment patterns

• Rapidly prototype, test, and iterate on tools in response to real-time feedback, balancing speed of delivery with long-term maintainability

• Help create and maintain technical documentation and frameworks that enable the team to scale deployments efficiently

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.

• LGBTQ+ 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.

• 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.

• Equity: Our equity program includes grants at hire, refresher grants after two years of tenure, and grants alongside promotions.

• Financial management: Handshake partners to provide free professional financial planning services.

• 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

Qualifications

• Some experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP), deployment pipelines, and production operations

• Strong communication skills, with the ability to build trust with both technical and non-technical audiences

• Good understanding of relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL), data modeling, and system design fundamentals

• Demonstrated ability to contribute to technical projects in ambiguous environments with shifting requirements

• Strong proficiency with ReactJS and TypeScript, with a solid bar for code quality, usability, and accessibility

• 1-4 years of professional software engineering experience, ideally including some exposure to customer-facing, solutions-oriented, or forward-deployed work

• Eagerness to learn from and collaborate with senior engineers, with growing interest in raising the bar on engineering practices

• Exposure to architecting or delivering systems for LLMs or other AI-powered products in customer-facing environments

• Some experience with performance optimization of full-stack applications

• Experience contributing to component libraries, design systems, or reusable frameworks

• Interest in or early experience with forward-deployed, solutions engineering, technical consulting, or customer facing work