Senior Software Engineer, Machine Learning

Handshake, Remote (USA)

Handshake is helping to democratize opportunity

We are thrilled to announce Handshake’s $200M Series F funding round. At Handshake, we believe that a career opportunity shouldn’t be determined by who you know or what you’ve done. It’s about what you can - and will - do. Your future, not your past. Our Series F fundraise and new valuation of $3.5B will fuel our next phase of growth and propel our mission to help more people start, restart, and jumpstart their careers.

Handshake is the #1 place to launch a career with no connections, experience, or luck required. Handshake’s community includes 20 million students and young alumni around the world from 1,400 educational institutions, including four-year colleges, community colleges, boot camps, and 290+ minority-serving institutions. The platform connects up-and-coming talent with 650,000+ employers - from Fortune 500 companies like Google, Nike, and Target to thousands of public school districts, healthcare systems, nonprofits, and even sports teams like the LA Dodgers. Handshake is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Denver, New York, and London and teammates working globally.

Everyone is welcome at Handshake. We know diverse teams build better products and we are committed to creating an inclusive culture built on a foundation of respect for all individuals. We strongly encourage candidates from non-traditional backgrounds, historically marginalized or underrepresented groups to apply.

If you are not sure that you’re 100% qualified, but up for the challenge – we want you to apply. We believe skills are transferable and passion for our mission goes a long way.

Your Impact

Handshake is hiring a senior software engineer to lead and support efforts to improve relevance throughout our product. This engineer will work on the relevance team alongside data scientists and machine learning engineers, but will play a role more similar to that of a backend application developer. This essential role requires bridging the gap between Handshake’s data and relevance platform, and its main user-facing application. If you’re enthusiastic about the human side of machine learning and big data engineering — that is, harnessing these technologies to deliver efficient, personalized, and intelligent user experiences for millions of students — then this role is for you.

Compensation range: $163,688 - $220,000

Your Role

You will be a system designer — developing and deploying large-scale data applications safely and reliably, as well as training your peers to do the same!
You will be an innovator — defining this role and helping us establish this team.
Above all, you will be a unifier — work with outstanding engineers and scientists on Handshake’s data platform and consumer application, and develop maintainable systems and technical assets for bridging those worlds together.

Your Experience

Are you skilled and experienced in any of the following?

Designed and developed backend system/service APIs that scale to million of users
Owned or contributed to developing search or recommendations systems for web-scale product features
Familiarity with GCP, ElasticSearch, REST APIs, Kubernetes, Airflow, PostgreSQL, Redis, Python, Spark, and/or BigQuery
Worked directly with cross-functional teams such as leadership, product management, engineering, and design
Diagnosing technical problems, debugging code, and automating routine tasks

If so, we’d highly encourage you to apply!

For cash compensation, we set standard ranges for all roles based on function, level, and geographic location, benchmarked against similar stage growth companies. In order to be compliant with local legislation, as well as to provide greater transparency to candidates, we share salary ranges on all job postings regardless of desired hiring location. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including geographic location as well as candidate experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above.

Benefits:

At Handshake, we'll give you the tools to feel healthy, happy and secure.

Stock: Ownership in a fast-growing company.
Hub-Based Remote Work: Handshakers can enjoy the flexibility of remote work whilst ensuring in-person collaboration, and team experiences remain possible.
Financial Management with Origin: We provide you with a professional financial planner via Origin to gain a better understanding of making the most of your compensation, equity, benefits, and perks.
Paid Parental Leave: All new parents at Handshake (both birth and non-birth giving) are encouraged to take time to focus on their growing family and are eligible for paid family leave. US Handshakers are provided up to 16 weeks of paid family leave for birth-giving parents and 10 weeks for non-birth-giving parents.
Mental Health Assistance: We are here to support you in every step of your mental health journey; our benefits include Employee Assistance Programs that offer counseling support for those eligible.
Home Office Stipend: Handshake offers $500/£360 for you to spend on setting up a productive and comfortable workspace at home.
Learning: Learning & Development opportunities and an annual $2,000/£1,500 stipend for you to grow your skills and career.
Team Bonding: Regularly scheduled virtual company-wide and team events! Once it’s safe, we’ll provide meaningful connection points throughout the year for Handshakers to build community and meet teammates in person.
Great team: Working with fun, hardworking, nice people who are committed to making a difference!

(US Handshakers)

401k: We care about your ability to save for your future. Launching Spring 2022, Handshake will offer a dollar-for-dollar match on 1% of deferred salary, up to a maximum of $1,200 per year.
Healthcare: World-class medical, dental, and vision policies including LGTBQ+ Coverage.
2022 Time Off: All full-time US-based Handshakers are eligible for our flexible time off policy to get out and see the world. We also offer 8 standardized holidays, 2 additional days of flexible holiday time off, and 2 one-week periods of Collective Time Off (7/4-7/8/2022) and (12/26-12/30/2022).

(UK Handshakers)

Pension: Handshake matches 3% of your salary towards your pension scheme.
Healthcare: Handshake's comprehensive healthcare policy covers 100% of employee premiums & 100% of dependent premiums for medical, dental, and vision benefits.
2022 Time Off: Up to 25 days of vacation to encourage people to reset, recharge, and refresh, in addition to 8 bank holidays throughout the year.

Benefits above apply to employees in full-time positions.

Looking for more? Explore our comprehensive US benefits at joinhandshake.com/careers.

Interested in what Handshake’s San Francisco HQ is like when we’re together? Check out this video:

About Handshake

How we got started Handshake was started in 2014 by Garrett Lord, Scott Ringwelski and Ben Christensen - three students from Michigan Tech, an engineering school in the far reaches of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Surrounded by more than 200 inches of annual snowfall and an eight-hour drive from Chicago or Detroit, Michigan Tech doesn’t see many recruiters from outside of the Midwest. Garrett was particularly frustrated about the difficulty Michigan Tech engineering students faced in getting in the door at top tech companies. So after hustling nonstop to get a Silicon Valley internship of his own, he took matters into his own hands and started brokering intros for his classmates to Bay Area companies. He earned $60k in referral bonuses in less than a year, and paid his way through college. Encouraged by the impact one person could make at one campus, Garrett, Scott, and Ben bought an old car and drove to college campuses across the country. They learned that students, employers and career centers were all frustrated by the current process, particularly how student access to opportunities was so unequal. So they formed Handshake to transform university recruiting for the 20 million higher education students across the country and ensure that every student would have the same access to every job, no matter where they go to school. Today, Handshake is a fast-growing team of 80 based in San Francisco. We partner with 400+ universities, uniting them into one powerful network, which makes it easy for 200,000 companies to recruit efficiently beyond their traditional “core” schools, increasing the breadth and scope of opportunities for our 8,000,000 students, and giving our partner universities the data and tools they need to help their students build meaningful careers.