Senior Frontend Engineer (Enterprise AI)

• We’re looking for a Senior Frontend Engineer who wants to architect the foundation — not just build on top of it
• As our first senior frontend hire, you’ll define how we build UI across the entire team
• That means establishing the component system, design language, and engineering patterns that every engineer who comes after you will rely on
• You’ll set the technical bar, make the foundational decisions, and build in a way that scales — so others can move fast without sacrificing quality
• This is a rare opportunity to own the frontend architecture of a new product from zero, at a company with the data, lab relationships, and momentum to win
• Architect the frontend foundation for Handshake AI Enterprise — component system, design tokens, patterns, and engineering conventions that the whole team builds on
• Make foundational technology decisions: framework choices, state management, rendering strategy, performance budgets
• Build shared libraries and abstractions that let other engineers move fast without reinventing the wheel or sacrificing quality
• Establish code standards, review practices, and documentation that scale as the team grows
• Collaborate closely with Applied AI and Platform engineers to define clean API contracts and integration patterns
• Ship production-grade UI for enterprise customer deployments alongside building the foundation
• Evolve the architecture over time as the team, product, and customer base scales

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.
• LGTBQ+ 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

• Proven experience building and maintaining shared component libraries or design systems used by other engineers
• Strong communication skills — you’ll need to align engineers, product, and design on how things get built
• 5–6+ years of frontend engineering experience with a strong architectural track record
• Comfort working in ambiguous, fast-moving environments where the right answer isn’t always obvious
• Deep expertise in ReactJS and TypeScript — you understand the tradeoffs, not just the syntax
• Strong opinions on frontend architecture — state management, rendering patterns, performance, accessibility — and the ability to defend and evolve them
• Experience making technology decisions that others depend on, with an eye toward long-term maintainability
• Familiarity with enterprise deployment environments or security constraints
• History of writing technical documentation or guides that helped other engineers ramp quickly
• Experience with performance optimization, accessibility standards, or cross-platform rendering at scale
• Background at a company known for high craft — you’ve seen what a great design system looks like from the inside
• Experience building frontend architecture for AI-powered or data-intensive applications