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Handshake AI is a rapidly scaling AI data business that has grown from $0 to ~$1B run rate in one year, working directly with frontier AI labs and Fortune 500 partners. As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you'll embed directly within enterprise customer environments as part of a small, expert deployment team.
You'll own the full stack of AI solution delivery: deeply understanding each customer's business, workflows, and bottlenecks; defining AI-driven solutions based on real business needs; building and deploying production-grade agents tailored to specific use cases; designing and running evaluations to measure agent performance; and iterating systematically until results move the needle. This is not a consulting or implementation role—you'll become a genuine domain expert in your customer's vertical and use that expertise to continuously improve AI performance.
You'll work closely with Product and Platform engineers to ship cohesive, reliable solutions. Over time, you'll establish engineering best practices, agent patterns, and reusable frameworks that help the forward-deployed team scale output without sacrificing quality. You'll also surface insights from deployments that inform Handshake's platform and product roadmap.
Required: 1–4+ years of full-stack engineering experience with strong backend depth; real-world experience building and shipping AI applications in production (not just fine-tuning or prototyping); strong understanding of agent architectures, evals, and systematic AI performance improvement; comfort working directly with enterprise customers in ambiguous, high-stakes environments; systems thinking to connect business problems to technical solutions; high ownership mentality focused on outcomes; and strong communication skills to earn trust with senior stakeholders.
Extra credit: forward deployment or field engineering background; multi-agent systems in production; domain expertise in enterprise verticals (recruiting, finance, ops, legal); familiarity with enterprise security, VPC deployments, or on-prem configurations; or experience building evals infrastructure and AI quality measurement tooling.
Role is based in San Francisco with 5 days/week in-office expectation. Handshake offers equity, competitive compensation, 401(k) match, comprehensive health benefits, paid parental leave, flexible PTO, $2,000 learning stipend, and other perks.
