Senior Software Engineer (Agentic Infrastructure)

• Handshake is hiring a Senior Software Engineer to join Backend Platform, with an initial focus on supporting Handshake AI (HAI) and internal AI initiatives
• You will build and maintain backend services, shared platform capabilities, and developer tooling that support HAI and internal AI initiatives.
• The work centers on core backend platform concerns—service architecture, APIs, data systems, performance, reliability, and developer experience—in an area making increasing use of LLMs and agents
• Design, build, and operate backend services and APIs that support HAI products and internal AI initiatives, primarily within our full-stack TypeScript repository
• Develop shared libraries, services, and architectural patterns that reduce duplicated work and make backend systems easier to extend and operate
• Improve the performance, scalability, reliability, and observability of HAI’s backend systems
• Lead work involving database design, data access patterns, query performance, indexing, caching, and the evolution of data models as products grow
• Identify recurring product-engineering problems and turn the right ones into reusable platform capabilities and well-understood patterns
• Make sound architectural decisions across mature systems and new services, balancing delivery speed, performance, maintainability, and operational cost
• Contribute directly to internal AI initiatives, including shared capabilities used to build, evaluate, and operate LLM-powered and agentic systems
• Partner with other teams in our Developer Platform group, including ML and Cloud Engineering, on model and service integration, orchestration, evaluation, observability, and failure handling
• Participate in technical planning, design and code reviews, operational support, and incident response
• Mentor other engineers and help establish practical backend engineering standards across HAI and internal AI initiatives
• This is a backend platform role supporting HAI and internal AI initiatives. The strongest candidates will bring TypeScript and Next.js depth alongside experience in backend architecture, databases, and performance, plus enough practical AI knowledge to contribute directly to this work
• Success does not require expertise in every model or framework, but it does require the ability to design and operate the systems around AI-powered product experiences

Benefits

• Health Insurance: Comprehensive medical , dental, and vision coverage
• Fertility and family forming: Through a partnership, Handshake offers comprehensive family benefits, including infertility treatments and a $15K stipend, to its employees.
• LGTBQ+ coverage: All medical plans cover transgender services.
• Mental health: Discounts on a variety of wellness apps and an Employee Assistance Program with access to five free counseling sessions.
• Tax savings: Tax-advantaged benefits to save money on healthcare, dependent care, and other expenses.
• Life & disability insurance: Essential benefits and automatic coverage with basic life insurance, plus short-term and long-term disability coverage.
• 401k match: Dollar-for-dollar match up to 1% of pay, with a max of $1,200 per year.
• Equity: Our equity program includes grants at hire, refresher grants after two years of tenure, and grants alongside promotions.
• Financial management: Handshake partners to provide free professional financial planning services.
• Learning & development: Employees are provided with an annual stipend to use towards professional development, career development workshops, manager trainings, and 1-on-1 coaching through external partnerships
• Community leader support: Employee Resource Group leaders are compensated with a quarterly bonus for the high-impact work the role requires
• Parental leave: Leaves of 16 weeks for birth-giving parents and 10 weeks for non-birth-giving parents; the policy applies to adoptions as well. Handshake also partners to provide one-on-one coaching on preparing for leave and coming back from leave
• Flexible time off: No accrued time off or waiting period to take vacation. Two paid flexible holiday days off to observe holidays that closely align with religious, cultural, and personal needs
• Sabbatical: Paid six-week sabbatical to recharge and reset beginning at six years of continuous, full-time employment, and every four years thereafter
• Volunteer time off: Two days off for social and civil activism, volunteer work, and/or any related activities, including attending and participating in protests- We are looking for someone who combines strong backend fundamentals with practical knowledge of LLM-powered and agentic systems
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, data modeling, service boundaries, common backend architecture patterns, and reliability and performance tradeoffs
• Strong experience with relational databases, including schema design, query optimization, indexing, transactions, and diagnosing database-related performance problems. Experience with PostgreSQL is especially relevant
• Strong communication skills and the ability to collaborate with product engineers and other teams across Developer Platform
• Sound technical judgment and a preference for understandable, maintainable systems over unnecessary complexity
• Practical knowledge of LLM-powered systems, including concepts such as model and tool integration, RAG, agent orchestration, prompt management, evaluation, and observability
• Experience operating services in cloud and containerized environments. Our broader platform uses technologies including GCP, Kubernetes, Terraform, and Docker
• Experience designing, building, and operating production services and APIs
• A record of independently driving ambiguous projects from problem definition through production rollout
• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, primarily in backend or platform engineering
• Familiarity with backend technologies such as Temporal, Redis, Elasticsearch, GraphQL, or event-driven systems
• We strongly prefer candidates with deep TypeScript and Next.js experience. Because this work is primarily based in a full-stack TypeScript repository, you should be comfortable navigating the broader application and contributing across boundaries when necessary
• Experience with event-driven architecture or high-throughput data systems
• Experience modernizing mature backend systems while continuing to support active product development
• Experience creating internal platforms, paved paths, or self-service tools used by other engineers
• Experience building internal AI tools or shared AI capabilities used by other engineers
• Experience with LLM orchestration frameworks or agent architectures involving tool use, memory, and multi-step workflows
• Direct production experience with product features powered by ML, LLMs, or agents