Software Engineer I, Build Review & Test

About Handshake

Handshake connects job seekers, employers, and educational institutions. Handshake AI works with frontier AI labs on human data, evaluations, benchmarks, and complex data-intensive AI development.

The Role

As a Software Engineer I, Build Review & Test, you will make development at Handshake faster, more reliable, and easier to understand. You will build tools that help engineers and coding agents run builds and tests, review changes, and understand failures. Developer feedback and system data will guide improvements to speed, reliability, and usability.

This is a full-time, on-site role in San Francisco, CA, with compensation of $136,000–$170,000. A background in developer tools or AI is not necessary.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain tools for builds, tests, code review, and merging changes for engineers and coding agents.
• Identify and resolve root causes of slow builds, unreliable tests, and confusing errors.
• Improve test speed and reliability by distributing work across machines, safely reusing results, and isolating tests.
• Make failures understandable and provide clear next steps.
• Improve tools, instructions, and environments used by coding agents to write, test, and debug code.
• Help build automated code reviews and checks while maintaining quality and safety standards.
• Use developer surveys and direct feedback to prioritize problems, release improvements safely, and assess their impact.
• Share knowledge through documentation, code reviews, and working sessions.

Qualifications

• About 3–5 years of professional software engineering experience, or comparable hands-on experience.
• Strong JavaScript or TypeScript skills and experience in the JavaScript ecosystem, whether server-side, such as Node.js or Bun, or browser-based.
• Hands-on experience with JavaScript unit testing and end-to-end testing using tools like Jest, Vitest, and Playwright.
• Experience shipping and maintaining production software, including writing automated tests.
• An evidence-driven approach to debugging and testing assumptions.
• Curiosity about unfamiliar code and patience in learning how systems work.
• A high bar for user experience, attention to detail, and willingness to listen to users.
• Ability to finish clearly defined projects independently and recognize when to seek help or collaborate.
• Clear communication and willingness to give feedback, learn from others, and share knowledge.

Preferred Experience

• Build systems or continuous integration using tools such as Buildkite, GitHub Actions, Docker, or Kubernetes.
• Building or extending test frameworks and shared libraries that improve test authoring and reliability.
• Improving test performance or fixing flaky tests.
• Using coding agents, providing useful instructions, and checking their results.
• Automated code review or testing, with or without AI.
• Making builds and releases reliable and secure.
• Investigating problems using logs, metrics, or traces.

Benefits

Benefits for full-time US employees include equity, a 401(k) match, financial coaching, paid parental leave, fertility benefits, parental coaching, medical/dental/vision coverage, mental health support, a $500 wellness stipend, a $2,000 learning stipend, ongoing development, internet and commuting benefits, free lunch and gym access in the San Francisco office, flexible PTO, 15 holidays plus two flex days, team outings, and referral bonuses.