Manager, Strategic Programs

Handshake•San Francisco, CA

3d•$152,000 - $190,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The Operator Enablement team ensures our Strategic Project Leads (SPLs) can run their projects successfully, meet customer demand, and deliver high quality data. As a Manager of Strategic Programs on this team, you will build and own the systems, tooling, and processes that SPLs depend on, from their first week at Handshake through running projects at scale. Your primary focus will be scaling our central quality control program — the processes and systems that give us a reliable, calibrated quality read on every dataset before it reaches a customer. You will start as an individual contributor with clear room to grow your scope and build a team underneath you as the work expands. Core to the role: Grow from 10s to 100s of quality auditors and from 100s to 1000s of auditing hours per week, without sacrificing calibration or reliability Augment auditing workflows with state-of-the-art LLM tools and prompt engineering best practices, increasing the efficiency of these workflows by 10x Embed quality processes into the broader Delivery organization, working cross-functionally with project leads to ensure consistent adherence Beyond quality, you could also work on: Build the onboarding experience that ramps dozens of new SPLs to full productivity every month Develop agentic operator tooling that makes SPLs roughly 10x more efficient at running their projects Launch an Emerging Talent program that identifies, trains, and recruits top students to join our Strategic Projects team as new grad SPLs straight out of college

Requirements

4+ years of experience in roles such as forward-deployed or solutions engineering, strategy and operations, or technical program management
A technical degree in a STEM field such as engineering, computer science, the physical sciences, statistics or analytics, or economics
Highly technical, with the ability to deploy cutting edge AI tools across complex operational workflows
Process oriented, with a track record of building and scaling efficient operational processes
Entrepreneurial, comfortable taking ambiguous problems and driving them to a clear result
A strong communicator who can bring in stakeholders, align them, and inspire people to deliver results
Willing and able to build and lead a team as the scope of the role grows

Nice To Haves

Founded or helped start a company
Worked in engineering, product, or operations at an early-stage, fast-growing startup
A track record of solving messy operational or highly cross-functional problems
Experience with quality management or operational excellence practices from other industries (e.g., manufacturing, logistics, healthcare)
Exposure to structured process-improvement thinking (like Lean, Six Sigma, or similar frameworks)

Responsibilities

Grow from 10s to 100s of quality auditors and from 100s to 1000s of auditing hours per week, without sacrificing calibration or reliability
Augment auditing workflows with state-of-the-art LLM tools and prompt engineering best practices, increasing the efficiency of these workflows by 10x
Embed quality processes into the broader Delivery organization, working cross-functionally with project leads to ensure consistent adherence
Build the onboarding experience that ramps dozens of new SPLs to full productivity every month
Develop agentic operator tooling that makes SPLs roughly 10x more efficient at running their projects
Launch an Emerging Talent program that identifies, trains, and recruits top students to join our Strategic Projects team as new grad SPLs straight out of college