Software Engineer, Fellow Experience
Role summary
Handshake is seeking a product-focused, full-stack Software Engineer to join their Fellow Experience team. This role involves building and scaling systems that manage the entire fellow journey, from project discovery to successful onboarding. You will work across frontend and backend to enhance project discovery, application, matching, and onboarding processes. Key responsibilities include developing full-stack features, designing APIs and workflows, and collaborating closely with product and design teams to deliver intuitive user experiences. The ideal candidate has 2+ years of experience with modern web stacks, strong TypeScript proficiency, and a product-oriented mindset.
About Handshake
Handshake is the career network for the AI economy. 20 million knowledge workers, 1,600 educational institutions, 1 million employers (including 100% of the Fortune 50), and every foundational AI lab trust Handshake to power career discovery, hiring, and upskilling, from freelance AI training gigs to first internships to full-time careers and beyond. This unique value is leading to unparalleled growth; in 2025, we tripled our ARR at scale.
Why Join Handshake Now
- Shape how every career evolves in the AI economy, at global scale, with impact your friends, family and peers can see and feel
- Work hand-in-hand with world-class AI labs, Fortune 500 partners and the world’s top educational institutions
- Join a team with leadership from Scale AI, Meta, xAI, Notion, Coinbase, and Palantir, among others
- Build a massive, fast-growing business with billions in revenue
About The Role
As a Software Engineer on the Fellow Experience team, you will build and scale
full-stack systems that power the middle-of-funnel experience for fellows
, from project discovery through successful onboarding.
You’ll work across frontend and backend surfaces to improve how fellows discover projects, apply, get matched, and onboard successfully. Your work will directly impact fellow volume, match quality, and conversion as we scale toward more intelligent automatic allocations.
This is a
product-focused, full-stack role
with real customer impact, close collaboration with product and design, and clear growth paths toward senior technical ownership.
The Fellow Experience team owns critical user journeys including the landing page experience for project invitations and applications, onboarding flows (confidentiality agreements, video/camera checks, educational programs, reading materials), project-specific assessments and recordings, and the internal tools that support manual matching.
In This Role, You Will
- Build and iterate on full-stack features that support fellow matching, onboarding, and readiness for project work
- Contribute to the evolution of our automatic allocations system by implementing matching logic, workflows, and product improvements with guidance from senior engineers
- Design and ship backend APIs, asynchronous workflows, and frontend user experiences that are reliable, scalable, and intuitive
- Partner closely with product managers and designers to deliver polished, end-to-end user experiences
- Write high-quality, maintainable code while balancing speed and correctness
- Debug and resolve issues related to onboarding flows, matching outcomes, and system reliability
- Participate in code reviews and contribute to improving engineering standards and best practices
- Grow toward increased technical ownership by learning from senior engineers on the team
Desired Capabilities
- 2+ years of professional software engineering experience
- Experience building full-stack applications, with comfort working across frontend and backend
- Strong proficiency in TypeScript
- Experience with modern web stacks (Next.js, tRPC, GraphQL, PostgreSQL)
- Familiarity with asynchronous workflows or background job systems
- Product-oriented mindset with a focus on user experience and business outcomes
- Strong communication skills and comfort collaborating cross-functionally
- Growth mindset and eagerness to take on increasing responsibility
Extra Credit
- Experience with workflow orchestration tools such as Temporal
- Exposure to matching systems, marketplaces, or multi-step onboarding flows
- Background at high-growth or scaling technology companies
- Interest in AI-driven products, human-in-the-loop systems, or data platforms
Perks
Handshake delivers benefits that help you feel supported—and thrive at work and in life.
The below benefits are for full-time US employees.
🎯
Ownership:
Equity in a fast-growing company
💰
Financial Wellness:
401(k) match, competitive compensation, financial coaching
🍼
Family Support:
Paid parental leave, fertility benefits, parental coaching
💝
Wellbeing:
Medical, dental, and vision, mental health support, wellness stipend
📚
Growth:
Learning stipend, ongoing development
💻
Remote & Office:
Internet, commuting, and free lunch/gym in our SF office
🏝
Time Off:
Flexible PTO, 15 holidays + 2 flex days
🤝
Connection:
Team outings & referral bonuses
Explore our mission, values, and comprehensive US benefits at
joinhandshake.com/careers
.
Compensation Range: $145K - $170K
Sample Handshake interview questions
- 1
Design a distributed logging system.
system designmedium - 2
Vertical Order Traversal Perform a vertical order traversal of a binary tree. Input: root = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7] Output: [[4],[2],[1,5,6],[3],[7]] Explanation: Traverses the tree maintaining column indices, seamlessly grouping nodes that share the exact same vertical alignment.
codingmedium - 3
Diameter of a Binary Tree Find the diameter of a binary tree. Input: root = [1,2] Output: 1 Explanation: The longest path is simply the single edge connecting the root node to its only child.
codingmedium - 4
Clone an Undirected Graph Clone an undirected graph. Input: adjList = [[]] Output: [[]] Explanation: Creates a new, deeply cloned graph containing only one single node with zero connected neighbors.
codingmedium - 5
Valid Word Abbreviation Determine if a string matches a valid word abbreviation. Input: word = "apple", abbr = "a2e" Output: FALSE Explanation: The abbreviation claims exactly 2 characters are skipped between 'a' and 'e', but "ppl" is actually 3 characters long.
codingmedium
Sign up for a personalized interview prep pack tailored to this role.