---
title: 'Staff Product Designer at Handshake'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-product-designer-handshake-san-francisco-wvywgvhxr8kq'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-09'
---

# Staff Product Designer at Handshake

- **Company:** [Handshake](https://feeny.ai/companies/handshake)
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-09-04
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/handshake/b80bc193-ed11-468c-be6c-485cacd2b33c

## Job description

## About Handshake

Handshake is the career network built for the AI economy. With 20 million knowledge workers, 1,600 educational institutions, 1 million employers—including 100% of the Fortune 50—and every major AI lab trusting Handshake to power career discovery, hiring, and upskilling, we sit at the intersection of talent and opportunity at a pivotal moment in history. From freelance AI training gigs to first internships to full-time careers, Handshake is where professional journeys begin and evolve. That unique position is driving extraordinary growth: in 2025, we tripled our ARR at scale.

## About the Role

As a Staff Product Designer on the Student Experience team at Handshake, you'll shape how millions of students discover jobs, build careers, and navigate one of the most consequential transitions in their lives. You'll own the end-to-end experience across job discovery and matching, resume building, interview prep, and long-term career planning — with a growing part of that experience powered by an AI agent that acts on a student's behalf, not just responds to their queries.

This team sits at the forefront of Handshake's product strategy. As a Staff Designer, you'll help define what great student career experiences look like at Handshake, bringing deep craft and systems thinking to everything from core flows to novel agentic interactions, while partnering closely with product, engineering, applied AI/research, data science, and career services experts to build products that millions of students rely on.

## Your Role

- Partner closely with product, engineering, applied AI, data science, and content teams to define problems, shape product strategy, and deliver student experiences that feel genuinely helpful and trustworthy end to end.
- Own design end-to-end, from early concept through post-launch iteration: user flows, interaction patterns, prototypes, high-fidelity mocks, and collaboration through implementation.
- Design across the full arc of the student journey — job discovery, matching, application support, interview prep, and career pathing — including experiences where an AI agent takes meaningful action for students, not just surfaces information.
- Tackle novel, ambiguous design problems, including those at the frontier of agentic UX: how to represent agent reasoning, build appropriate trust and control, handle uncertainty, and hand off between AI and human judgment at the right moments.
- Rapidly iterate through wireframes, prototypes, and experiments to validate interaction models and optimize for real career outcomes — better job matches, stronger applications, faster placement.
- Partner with cross-functional teams to design and refine how new capabilities, including agentic features, are introduced, explained, and trusted by students.
- Obsess over craft, bringing a strong point of view on visual design, interaction design, and systems thinking while maintaining a relentless focus on student outcomes and wellbeing.

## Your Experience

- 7+ years of product design experience, ideally building consumer-facing products at scale.
- A track record of owning complex, end-to-end product experiences — not just individual features or flows.
- Experience designing AI-powered or agentic products — systems that take action, make recommendations, or automate tasks on a user's behalf, not just conversational chat interfaces — is a strong plus.
- Strong communicator who clearly articulates design decisions, tradeoffs, user insights, and the thinking behind them to partners and leadership.
- Deep visual and interaction design expertise, with a proven track record of shipping high-quality experiences that drive measurable impact.
- Experience designing for trust, transparency, and control — helping users understand what a system is doing and why, and feel confident acting on its recommendations.
- Comfortable incorporating generative AI tools into the design process to accelerate ideation, prototyping, and iteration, while maintaining a high bar for product thinking, craft, and user experience.
- Comfortable using qualitative and quantitative insights to inform design decisions, evaluate experiments, and iterate quickly on emerging patterns.
- Highly collaborative. You value diverse perspectives and partner effectively across engineering, product, applied AI, data science, and career services experts.
- Design-led thinker who raises the bar by embedding design thinking into product development and helping others grow.
- Impact-driven. You prioritize ruthlessly and focus on the work that matters most for student career outcomes.
- Gritty and hands-on. You're willing to roll up your sleeves and take ownership — nothing is "someone else's problem."
- Deeply motivated by Handshake's mission and committed to helping students build meaningful careers in the AI economy.
- Curious and always learning, with a growth mindset — especially about how agentic AI is reshaping product design.

Bonus Points

- Experience designing agent-based or copilot products (career coaching, personal assistants, autonomous task agents, etc.).
- Familiarity with career services, higher education, recruiting, or early-career talent pipelines.
- Background in designing for high-stakes decisions where trust, explainability, and error recovery matter (finance, health, hiring).
- Passion for early-career professionals, the future of work, or the intersection of AI and human potential.

## We Offer

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, $500 wellness stipend

📚 Growth: $2,000 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 http://joinhandshake.com/careers. http://joinhandshake.com/careers.Your

## About Handshake

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Handshake is the career network for the AI economy, connecting job seekers with internships, full-time roles, freelance gigs, and AI training work through a three-sided marketplace.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series F; total funding $434M across 6 rounds)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2014
- **Founders**: Garrett Lord (CEO), Ben Christensen, Scott Ringwelski

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Career platform / Job marketplace / AI workforce infrastructure
- **Target customers**: B2C (job seekers, from students to experienced professionals) and B2B (employers including 100% of Fortune 500 and all foundational AI labs; also educational institutions)
- **Mission**: Expand access and improve outcomes for job seekers, helping the workforce stay ahead in the AI economy.

## Products & Services
- **Handshake Core Platform**: A three-sided marketplace connecting 25 million knowledge workers, 1,600+ schools, and 1 million employers. Features dynamic profiles, intelligent job matching, and interactive skill-building.
- **Handshake AI Enterprise**: AI-powered tools for employers and job seekers, including AI-driven matching, safety features, and pay management.
- **AI Trainer Gigs**: Paid, flexible, remote work for individuals to train and evaluate AI models (e.g., AI Evaluation Specialist, up to $40/hr) – no prior AI experience required.
- **Handshake Network**: Community events, career advice, and networking for students, experts, and professionals in AI and other fields.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding $434M (6 rounds); annual revenue $56.5M (LinkedIn estimate)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Board includes representatives from General Catalyst, Kleiner Perkins, EQT Ventures, True Ventures, and Niantic. Strategic partners include 100% of the Fortune 500 and foundational AI labs.
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount at 5,272 employees (+708.8% YoY per LinkedIn); 1M+ companies on platform; 25M users; expansion into AI trainer gig economy; new roles in HAI (Handshake AI Enterprise) such as Applied AI Engineer, AI Platform Engineer, and Forward Deployed Engineer.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Network effects**: The only three-sided marketplace linking students, employers, and educational institutions at scale.
- **AI-first positioning**: Deep integration of AI into job matching, skill-building, and new freelance training roles – creating a unique ecosystem for the AI economy.
- **Trusted by elite institutions**: 1,600+ partner schools and every Fortune 500 company provides unparalleled reach into early-career talent.

## Strategic Focus
- **AI economy expansion**: Building the “career network for the AI economy” – expanding beyond college students to all knowledge workers, and adding AI training gigs as a new revenue and engagement stream.
- **Product innovation**: Heavy investment in Handshake AI Enterprise (HAI), including AI matching, safety, and pay infrastructure.
- **Global scaling**: Offices in San Francisco, New York, UK, and Bangalore; operating in 32 countries.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Values include “Students first,” “Leave nothing to chance,” “Own the outcome,” “Invent and reinvent,” and “Olympic pace.” Emphasis on ownership, urgency, and constant evolution.
- **Remote/Hybrid policy**: Many roles are based in San Francisco or New York, but some positions (e.g., Trust & Safety Specialist, Support Specialist) are remote in the US. Recent openings show both office and remote options.
- **Benefits**: Health & wellness support, financial support, time off, modern offices with meals, snacks, and social activities. Strong focus on career growth and learning.
- **Career growth**: Rapid headcount growth suggests ample internal mobility; roles range from engineering (ML, AI, data) to customer success, partnerships, and product management.

## Sources
1. [joinhandshake.com/about](https://joinhandshake.com/about/)
2. [joinhandshake.com/careers](https://joinhandshake.com/careers/)
3. [linkedin.com/company/team-handshake](https://www.linkedin.com/company/team-handshake)
4. [joinhandshake.com](https://joinhandshake.com/)

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