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Handshake

Senior Software Engineer, Growth

🇺🇸 San Francisco, CA 🕑 Full-Time 💰 TBD 💻 Software Engineering 🗓️ July 16th, 2026
GraphQL Rive

Edtech.com's Summary

Handshake is hiring a Senior Software Engineer on the Growth team. The role involves building products that connect millions of students with employers by designing, developing, and scaling distributed systems and experiments to optimize user onboarding, activation, retention, and notifications.

Highlights
  • Design, build, and ship user funnel experiments with measurable impact.
  • Architect and scale distributed systems supporting millions of users.
  • Collaborate with Product Managers and Data Scientists on growth hypotheses and technical solutions.
  • Mentor engineers and promote a culture of technical excellence.
  • Balance speed and rigor between lightweight tests and production-grade features.
  • Proficient in backend and/or full-stack development (e.g., Ruby on Rails, GraphQL, React).
  • Experience with experimentation platforms such as feature flagging and A/B testing frameworks.
  • Minimum 5 years of professional software engineering experience, ideally in consumer-facing or growth products.
  • Extra credit for experience in notifications, user authentication/authorization at scale, mobile growth, LLM-powered or AI-assisted product features.
  • Competitive compensation with equity, 401(k) match, paid parental leave, wellness benefits, flexible PTO, and other perks.

Senior Software Engineer, Growth Full 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 the Role

As a Senior Software Engineer on the Growth team, you'll build the products that connect millions of students with employers. You'll drive meaningful technical initiatives, shape the technical direction of the team, and deliver high-quality, scalable solutions that directly impact one of the fastest-growing career platforms in the world.

This role is onsite 5 days a week in our SF office.

Your Role

  • Design, build, and ship experiments across the user funnel — onboarding, activation, retention, notifications — with a strong bias toward measurable impact

  • Architect and scale distributed systems to support millions of users, ensuring high availability and performance

  • Partner with Product Managers and Data Scientists to translate growth hypotheses into technical designs and shippable experiments

  • Mentor and elevate engineers across the team, fostering a culture of growth and technical excellence

  • Balance speed and rigor — know when to move fast with a lightweight test and when a feature needs production-grade durability

Desired Capabilities

  • 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, ideally with exposure to consumer-facing or growth-focused products

  • Strong fundamentals in backend and/or full-stack development (adjust based on your stack — e.g., Ruby on Rails, GraphQL, React, or equivalent)

  • Experience building or working within experimentation platforms (e.g., feature flagging, A/B testing frameworks, statistical significance tooling)

  • A track record of shipping iteratively and learning from real user data, not just building to spec

  • Strong collaboration skills — you can work fluidly with PMs, designers, and data scientists, and can communicate trade-offs clearly

  • A growth mindset: curiosity about why something worked or didn't, not just whether it shipped

Extra Credit

  • Background in notification, acquisition, user authentication/authorization at scale

  • Background in mobile growth (iOS/Android) alongside web

  • Familiarity with LLM-powered features or AI-assisted product experiences

  • Prior experience in high-growth or rapidly scaling environments

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.