Senior Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering

Job Description

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

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 Senior Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering, you sit at the intersection of technical leadership and people management keeping one hand on the hardest customer problems while building and developing a team of 10 engineers across multiple engagements. You'll stay technically engaged, writing code and designing systems alongside your team, but your primary leverage is creating the conditions for exceptional engineering: setting the technical and operational standard for the FDE organization, shaping strategy and structure, and growing the people who deliver it.

This is a player-coach role at scale. You lead by example technically, develop strong TLMs and senior ICs beneath you, and build the systems and playbooks that make the team compounding. The best person for this job knows when to step in, reviewing designs, challenging assumptions, and rolling up their sleeves on the hardest problems, and when to step back and let the team they've built carry the weight.

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

• Own the technical strategy and delivery quality across all of FDE's highest-priority customer engagements.

• Stay close to the craft, contribute to architecture, design reviews, and production solutions on the most complex accounts.

• Lead and develop a team of 10+ FDEs, including Tech Lead Managers, set the bar, unblock, and grow the next generation of technical leaders.

• Serve as the executive technical point of contact for Handshake AI's most strategic partners; build deep trust through credibility, clarity, and execution.

• Define and evolve the FDE operating model, how the team scopes, staffs, ships, and measures success across engagements.

• Identify patterns across the portfolio and drive the development of reusable platforms, tooling, and internal infrastructure that multiply team output.

• Partner closely with Sales, Research, and Product to shape how new customer relationships are structured and handed off.

• Own capacity planning, hiring, and organizational design for the FDE function as it scales.

Must-Haves:

• 8+ years of engineering, solutions engineering, or technical delivery experience, with meaningful depth in backend, fullstack, or systems work.

• 2+ years leading high-performing technical teams, with a track record of developing strong ICs and managers.

• Proven experience leading customer-facing technical teams where success depended on credibility, clarity, and execution.

• Obsessed with operating alongside the team: reviewing designs, challenging assumptions, and stepping in when problems get ambiguous or high-stakes.

• Fluent across engineering and business context, equally comfortable debating architecture with engineers and aligning outcomes with sales, product, and customer leaders.

• Excellent communicator who can modulate the message across technical and non-technical audiences; strong executive presence in the room and in writing.

• Still codes regularly and wants to keep coding, technical credibility is non-negotiable in this role.

• Sharp instincts on prioritization and portfolio management across many concurrent, high-stakes engagements.

Bonus Points:

• 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.

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.

Compensation Range: $255K - $300K