Forward Deployed Engineer I, Handshake AI

Handshake•San Francisco, CA

2d•$145,000 - $170,000•Onsite

About The Position

As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you'll work at the intersection of our engineering organization and our most strategic customers, including leading AI labs. You'll contribute to the full lifecycle of high-impact deployments—helping scope technical requirements, building and iterating on solutions that directly improve customer workflows and model performance. You'll operate across the stack in ambiguous, fast-changing environments, working closely with senior engineers to shape how we approach our most critical partnerships. This is a unique opportunity to combine hands-on technical work with direct customer engagement—learning how to deliver at the highest level while growing your skills in a forward-deployed environment.

Requirements

1-4 years of professional software engineering experience, ideally including some exposure to customer-facing, solutions-oriented, or forward-deployed work.
Strong proficiency with ReactJS and TypeScript, with a solid bar for code quality, usability, and accessibility.
Good understanding of relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL), data modeling, and system design fundamentals.
Some experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP), deployment pipelines, and production operations.
Demonstrated ability to contribute to technical projects in ambiguous environments with shifting requirements.
Strong communication skills, with the ability to build trust with both technical and non-technical audiences.
Eagerness to learn from and collaborate with senior engineers, with growing interest in raising the bar on engineering practices.

Nice To Haves

Exposure to architecting or delivering systems for LLMs or other AI-powered products in customer-facing environments.
Experience contributing to component libraries, design systems, or reusable frameworks.
Some experience with performance optimization of full-stack applications.
Interest in or early experience with forward-deployed, solutions engineering, technical consulting, or customer facing work.

Responsibilities

Partner with AI labs and cross-functional stakeholders to understand technical challenges, help translate requirements into actionable engineering plans, and contribute to alignment across teams.
Build and iterate on tailored, production-grade solutions for complex customer needs, often with guidance from senior engineers and minimal existing playbooks.
Participate actively in code reviews and contribute to best practices for forward-deployed work.
Contribute to architectural discussions around reliability, scalability, and security, and help implement repeatable deployment patterns.
Rapidly prototype, test, and iterate on tools in response to real-time feedback, balancing speed of delivery with long-term maintainability.
Help create and maintain technical documentation and frameworks that enable the team to scale deployments efficiently.