What are the responsibilities and job description for the AI Research Engineer position at Handshake?
About Handshake
Handshake is the career network for the AI economy. 20 million knowledge workers, 1,600 educational institutions, 1 million employers (including 100% of the Fortune 50), and every foundational AI lab trust Handshake to power career discovery, hiring, and upskilling, from freelance AI training gigs to first internships to full-time careers and beyond. This unique value is leading to unparalleled growth; in 2025, we tripled our ARR at scale.
Why Join Handshake Now
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
💻 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.
Compensation Range: $330K - $370K
Handshake is the career network for the AI economy. 20 million knowledge workers, 1,600 educational institutions, 1 million employers (including 100% of the Fortune 50), and every foundational AI lab trust Handshake to power career discovery, hiring, and upskilling, from freelance AI training gigs to first internships to full-time careers and beyond. This unique value is leading to unparalleled growth; in 2025, we tripled our ARR at scale.
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
- Work hand-in-hand with world-class AI labs, Fortune 500 partners and the world’s top educational institutions
- Join a team with leadership from Scale AI, Meta, xAI, Notion, Coinbase, and Palantir, among others
- Build a massive, fast-growing business with billions in revenue
- Design and implement post-training systems and methodologies in close partnership with research scientists and domain experts
- Build and maintain infrastructure that supports large-scale model training, specialized data processing, and benchmark evaluation
- Develop robust frameworks for verifying the quality and integrity of highly specialized domain datasets
- Create next-generation LLM benchmarks that push the boundaries of model evaluation and capabilities assessment
- Optimize performance across software and hardware layers to accelerate post-training experimentation and deployment
- Collaborate across disciplines to ensure rigorous validation of model improvements and benchmark reliability
- Strong Python programming skills with attention to clean, efficient, and scalable code
- Experience building and operating large-scale systems for model post-training, specialized data processing, or benchmark evaluation
- Deep familiarity with PyTorch and modern post-training techniques (RLHF, constitutional AI, etc.)
- A background in applied machine learning, model evaluation, or large-scale data quality assessment
- Experience with benchmark design, evaluation methodologies, and performance measurement frameworks
- Clear communication skills and a collaborative mindset for cross-functional research teams
- Experience optimizing deep learning models for performance (e.g., memory usage, training speed)
- Interest in the societal and ethical impacts of AI technologies
- Contributions to open-source ML infrastructure or tools
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
💻 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.
Compensation Range: $330K - $370K
Salary : $330,000 - $370,000