Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

Location

India

Employment Type

Full time

Location Type

On-site

Department

Engineering

About Handshake

Handshake was founded on a simple belief that everyone deserves a path to a great career, regardless of where they went to school or who they know. Today, we power 25 million job seekers, 1 million+ employers, and 1,600 educational institutions.

In 2025, we started Handshake AI and built the fastest-growing AI data business in history. We work directly with frontier AI lab researchers to create evaluations, publish benchmarks, and push the boundary of data. We’ve grown from $0 to ~$1B run rate and pay ~$60M to over 30K individuals every month.

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

Partner hand-in-hand with world-class AI labs, Fortune 500 partners and the world’s top educational institutions

Work together with engineers, scientists, operators, and more from Palantir, Meta, Scale AI, and former YC founders

Build a massive, fast-growing business with billions in revenue

About Handshake AI

Human data is the core infrastructure to AI advancement. Frontier AI labs currently improve model capabilities with various data-intensive post-training techniques. We believe that data spend for AI training will increase by 3-5x in the next few years and continue for much longer as models take on new domains. Handshake AI supports all of the frontier AI labs, working on their most complex data at the largest scale.

About the Role

We're hiring a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer to work directly with frontier AI labs to solve their most complex engineering challenges.

As a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer, you'll own the end-to-end lifecycle of customer deployments - from understanding technical requirements to architecting, building, and scaling production systems that improve customer workflows and model performance. You'll operate across the stack, partnering closely with Engineering, Research, Product, and Operations teams in both India and the US to deliver solutions for our most strategic customers.

This is a unique opportunity to combine deep software engineering with customer partnership, helping shape how Handshake AI delivers solutions to the world's leading AI labs.

Location: Bengaluru, India. This is an in-office role.

What You'll Do

Partner directly with frontier AI labs to understand complex technical challenges and translate them into scalable engineering solutions

Partner closely with Engineering, Research, Product, and Operations teams in the US to execute against a shared roadmap

Design, build, and deploy production-grade applications that solve high-impact customer problems

Own technical architecture for customer deployments with a focus on reliability, scalability, security, and maintainability

Rapidly prototype, test, and iterate on solutions based on customer feedback

Build reusable tools, frameworks, and deployment patterns that improve delivery across customer engagements

Mentor engineers through technical leadership, code reviews, and engineering best practices

Help establish a strong engineering culture as we continue building our India engineering organization

What We're Looking For

6+ years of professional software engineering experience

Experience leading technically complex customer-facing, solutions engineering, or forward deployed engineering projects

Strong proficiency with TypeScript, React, and modern backend architectures

Deep understanding of relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL), system design, distributed systems, and cloud infrastructure

Experience building and operating production systems on AWS or GCP

Strong technical judgment and the ability to solve complex engineering problems in fast-moving, ambiguous environments

Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills

Experience collaborating effectively with globally distributed engineering teams, including teams based in the US

Nice to Have

Experience building AI-powered products, LLM infrastructure, or machine learning platforms

Experience working directly with enterprise customers or strategic technical partners

Familiarity with Docker, Kubernetes, and CI/CD pipelines

Experience supporting applied AI or ML research teams

Experience working in a fast-growing startup or high-growth engineering organization

What Success Looks Like

Customer deployments launch successfully and deliver measurable value

Technical solutions become reusable across multiple customer engagements

Deployments are reliable, scalable, and easy to maintain

Customer feedback directly informs platform improvements and future product capabilities

You become a trusted technical partner across customers and engineering teams in both India and the US

You’ll Thrive Here If You:

Are motivated by solving operational problems that have direct, measurable impact.

Want to be part of a company shaping the future of AI through human data.

Can navigate ambiguity, act with urgency, and keep multiple workstreams moving in parallel.

Perks:

Generous Equity Grant vested over 4 years

Housing Bonus: 1.3 Lakhs spread throughout the first year

Well Defined Performance Bonus ranging between 10 - 100% of base

Medical Insurance Coverage

Food credit for every in person day.