Senior Software Engineer (Consumer Experience)

• As a Senior Software Engineer on the Consumer Experience team, you’ll build the products that connect millions of students with employers. You’ll drive meaningful technical initiatives, shape the technical direction of the team, and deliver high-quality, scalable solutions that directly impact one of the fastest-growing career platforms in the world
• Lead the design and development of consumer-facing features that enhance user engagement and streamline the student-employer connection process
• Architect and scale distributed systems to support millions of users, ensuring high availability and performance
• Influence technical direction by collaborating with cross-functional teams to align engineering efforts with business goals
• Mentor and elevate engineers across the team, fostering a culture of growth and technical excellence
• Champion engineering best practices that raise the bar on product quality and team efficiency

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- 8+ years of software engineering experience with a proven track record of owning and delivering large-scale, complex systems
• Strong proficiency in Go, Python, or JavaScript with a focus on maintainable, high-quality production systems
• Experience mentoring senior engineers and elevating engineering culture
• Exceptional communication skills with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences
• Solid understanding of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and modern system design principles
• Expertise in building and scaling distributed systems, preferably within consumer platforms or social products
• Demonstrated experience operating at a staff-level scope, influencing technical direction across multiple teams
• Background in search, recommendations, ranking systems, or personalization at scale
• Experience with user identity knowledge graphs, including entity resolution and real-time inference
• Experience building AI-powered systems, including LLM-based applications
• Prior experience in high-growth or rapidly scaling environments