Handshake

Handshake

Director, Applied Machine Learning

San Francisco, CA · Director · Full-time

Sponsorship not specifiedDetected 7 days ago
RESTMachine LearningLLMsResearchLeadershipCommunication

About the role

  • 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.

Responsibilities

  • Lead post-training and RL environment strategy - you don't need to be the deepest technical expert, but your team needs to be able to lean on you for real guidance grounded in lab experience
  • Build and scale the infrastructure and team needed to run post-training at scale across multiple applied use cases
  • Own strategic project support across lab engagements - leading your team through a dynamic, evolving roadmap rather than executing the work solo
  • Manage and grow a team including AI Engineers, Research Scientists and AI Forward Deployed Engineers, with a path toward managing managers as the org scales
  • Partner directly with AI lab researchers and internal stakeholders across engineering and operations, translating ambiguous priorities into clear direction for your team
  • Maintain direct customer relationships, following up, communicating progress, and building trust with technical partners
  • post-training and RL environments, scaled post-training infrastructure, and strategic project support across our lab partnerships.
  • You think like an applied researcher, lead like an operator, and move fluidly between technical depth and client-facing strategy.
  • You'll build and grow a team, set the technical standards for how the team engages with frontier labs, and help shape the roadmap as we scale, not just execute against it.
  • This is a rare opportunity to lead at the frontier of gen AI, with direct visibility into where model training is headed before the rest of the world sees it.

Requirements

  • Experience leading and growing technical teams, ideally with a research background in applied ML or AI

Nice to have

  • Prior lab experience deploying or training agents for applied, real-world use cases
  • Experience managing managers or scaling a team through multiple growth stages
  • Familiarity with evaluation frameworks, annotation tooling, or human feedback collection at scale

Compensation

  • 💰 Financial Wellness: 401(k) match, competitive compensation, financial coaching

Benefits

  • 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
  • 💻 Office: Commuting support, free lunch, and gym in our SF office
  • 🏝 Time Off: Flexible PTO, 15 holidays + 2 flex days
  • Partner hand-in-hand with world-class AI labs, Fortune 500 partners and the world's top educational institutions
  • Build a massive, fast-growing business with billions in revenue

Company info

  • 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.
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This listing is sourced directly from Handshake's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.