Associate Software Engineer, Operator Experience

Handshake•San Francisco, CA

1d•$125 - $145•Hybrid

About The Position

As a Software Engineer on Operating Tooling, you'll build internal products and automation that help Handshake's operators run the business at high quality and speed. This team functions like an embedded/consulting engineering group: you'll partner directly with operators, learn their workflows, and help ship new operational capabilities. This role is collaborative and communication-heavy. Success requires solid technical fundamentals plus good EQ—someone who can take clearly-scoped operational needs and turn them into reliable, well-built systems, iterating based on feedback from operators and senior engineers.

Requirements

0-2 years of software engineering experience, with some experience owning features or small projects from implementation through production support.
Good communication skills and comfort working with non-engineering stakeholders.
Growing engineering judgment: able to write clean, scalable code with guidance, and eager to learn how to make good abstraction and design tradeoffs.
Curiosity and adaptability in ambiguous environments, with a track record of shipping incremental improvements.

Nice To Haves

Exposure to building internal tools, workflow systems, or automation (through internships, previous roles, or side projects) is a plus.
Exposure to workflow/backlog systems, intake processes, or operational analytics (instrumentation, dashboards, QA).
Interest in operating in a fast-paced, embedded-engineering environment.
Coursework, projects, or prior experience touching knowledge-work operations tooling (e.g., case management, review/approval flows, data quality tooling).

Responsibilities

Work with operators (with support from senior engineers) to understand processes and pain points, and help translate them into technical requirements.
Build internal tools, automations, and workflows that improve operational throughput, accuracy, and visibility.
Own well-scoped projects or features end-to-end: implementation, testing, rollout, and iteration, with guidance on discovery and technical design.
Write maintainable, well-tested code and follow established engineering practices for the internal-tools environment.
Collaborate with cross-functional partners (operators, engineering, product) to gather feedback and drive adoption of the tools you build.
Seek feedback proactively and grow your technical judgment through code review and pairing with more senior engineers.