Senior Software Engineer, Consumer Experience

Handshake • San Francisco, CA

4d

About The Position

As a Senior Software Engineer, you will drive the design and development of the core experiences that help students find opportunities, spanning search, discovery, jobs, and job search. You will set technical direction, uplevel engineering quality, and play a key role in scaling our platform and AI-powered experiences.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in software engineering, ideally with consumer platforms, marketplaces, or social apps at meaningful scale.
• Proficiency in programming languages such as Python, Java, or JavaScript, with a track record of delivering robust, production-quality systems.
• Strong product sense and user empathy, with experience shaping features that create real value for members and measurable business impact.
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud) and modern architectures (microservices, event-driven systems, or distributed systems).
• Ability to break down complex problems, make pragmatic technical decisions, and communicate trade-offs clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with experience mentoring other engineers and contributing to a healthy engineering culture.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with AI, chatbots, or conversational interfaces.
• Background working with search, recommendations, ranking systems, or other relevance-focused products.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement scalable, high-availability systems powering search and discovery experiences across our platform.
• Lead the development of agentic AI experiences for students, including our conversational AI agent for resume help, job search, and interview prep.
• Work with OpenAI real-time APIs and agentic frameworks to deliver intelligent, conversational features, and guide best practices for their use across teams.
• Collaborate with cross-functional partners (Product, Design, Data, GTM) to define, build, and iterate on features that drive member value and engagement.
• Own projects end-to-end, from technical design and implementation to rollout and monitoring, ensuring reliability and performance at scale.
• Champion engineering excellence through code reviews, technical mentorship, and improving our tooling, standards, and architecture.

Benefits

• Equity in a fast-growing company
• 401(k) match, competitive compensation, financial coaching
• Paid parental leave, fertility benefits, parental coaching
• Medical, dental, and vision, mental health support, wellness stipend
• Learning stipend, ongoing development
• Internet, commuting, and free lunch/gym in our SF office
• Flexible PTO, 15 holidays + 2 flex days
• Team outings & referral bonuses

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed