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Handshake is the career network for the AI economy, serving 25 million knowledge workers, 1,600 educational institutions, and 1 million employers (including 100% of the Fortune 50). Handshake AI is the fastest-growing and most revenue-generating division, powering expert-labeled data collection at scale by matching domain experts with leading AI companies to train frontier models. The company tripled ARR in 2025 and aims to become the default platform for the AI data economy.
You will serve as VP of Product for Handshake AI, leading product strategy, roadmap, and execution for one of the fastest-growing AI startups in the country. This is a genuine VP role with full ownership and accountability, not a title-only position. You will report to the Chief Product Officer, sit on the senior leadership team, and partner directly with Engineering, Design, Operations, and Sales/Customer leadership.
Key responsibilities include:
**Product Strategy & Vision**: Set the product strategy for Handshake AI across data modalities, operator and fellow platforms, and customer-facing surfaces. Translate the mission into a concrete, sequenced roadmap that keeps pace with rapid business growth.
**Team Leadership**: Build and lead a product organization of PMs across modalities and platform pods (e.g., Operator Experience, Fellow Experience, modality-specific pods). Hire exceptional talent, set standards for craft and rigor, and develop managers and individual contributors.
**Cross-Functional Partnership**: Act as connective tissue between Engineering, Design, Operations, and GTM. Ensure product priorities reflect both customer needs and business scaling imperatives, with coherent trade-offs across pods rather than siloed decisions.
**Executive-Level Prioritization**: Make hard calls on which modalities to invest in, which platform capabilities to build now versus later, and where to say no. Communicate strategy and trade-offs clearly to the executive team and board.
**Metrics & Accountability**: Define success metrics for the product organization—revenue enablement, quality outcomes, operator/fellow efficiency, time-to-launch for new modalities—and hold the org accountable.
**Customer & Market Fluency**: Spend real time with AI labs, enterprise customers, and internal stakeholders to understand market evolution and keep Handshake AI ahead of the human-data category.
**Platform Scaling**: Ensure the underlying product and operational platform can flex to new customer types, data types, and volumes without requiring linear headcount growth.
The role sits at the center of a rapidly compounding business with new customers, new data modalities, a growing operator and fellow ecosystem, and increasingly complex platform needs. You will turn that complexity into a coherent product organization with clear strategy and strong talent.
**Requirements:**
- 12+ years in product management, including 4+ years as a senior product leader managing other PMs and managers, ideally at a high-growth startup
- Experience owning product for a business or major business line growing quickly, with demonstrated ability to build strategy and org structure that scale with revenue
- Strong operational intuition; experience building or overseeing platforms for internal users, operations teams, or complex two-sided marketplaces (not just consumer-facing features)
- Track record hiring and developing product talent, including PMs who own ambiguous, 0→1 problem spaces
- Systems thinker who can hold a multi-modality, multi-stakeholder roadmap and make coherent trade-offs
- Comfortable operating in high ambiguity; market, customer needs, and product surface area are still being defined
- Data-informed but action-oriented; use metrics to prioritize but move with conviction when signal is directional
- Excellent executive communication; can represent product strategy credibly to C-suite, board, and customers
**Bonus qualifications:**
- Experience in human data, annotation/labeling, RLHF, or AI training data ecosystems
- Experience building or scaling a marketplace or platform business (two-sided, operator/worker-facing)
- Prior experience at a fast-growing AI lab, data company, or enterprise SaaS company through hypergrowth
- Experience building career, talent, or workforce products
