Staff Software Engineer (Consumer Experience)

• As a Staff Software Engineer on the Consumer Experience 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
• Lead the design and development of consumer-facing features that enhance user engagement and streamline the student-employer connection process
• Architect and scale distributed systems to support millions of users, ensuring high availability and performance
• Influence technical direction by collaborating with cross-functional teams to align engineering efforts with business goals
• Mentor and elevate engineers across the team, fostering a culture of growth and technical excellence
• Champion engineering best practices that raise the bar on product quality and team efficiency

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

• Demonstrated experience operating at a staff-level scope, influencing technical direction across multiple teams
• Solid understanding of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and modern system design principles
• Exceptional communication skills with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences
• Strong proficiency in Go, Python, or JavaScript with a focus on maintainable, high-quality production systems
• Experience mentoring senior engineers and elevating engineering culture
• 8+ years of software engineering experience with a proven track record of owning and delivering large-scale, complex systems
• Expertise in building and scaling distributed systems, preferably within consumer platforms or social products
• Background in search, recommendations, ranking systems, or personalization at scale
• Experience with user identity knowledge graphs, including entity resolution and real-time inference
• Prior experience in high-growth or rapidly scaling environments
• Experience building AI-powered systems, including LLM-based applications