Handshake
Forward Deployed Engineer, Handshake AI
Why it's interesting
The campus-recruiting company quietly built 'the fastest-growing AI data business in history' in 2025 — Handshake AI FDEs sit across the table from frontier-lab researchers building evals and benchmarks. A direct Scale/Surge competitor hiring FDEs at both I and Senior levels.
The role
Embed with frontier AI labs and enterprise customers to design evaluations, publish benchmarks, and ship multi-agent data workflows. Handshake AI launched in 2025 as the data arm of the recruiting platform; the FDE function spans junior (0–3 yrs) through Senior seats. SF-based, customer- and researcher-facing. Sourced via Glassdoor US sweep (2026-07-25), verified on Handshake's own careers site.
Applications go directly to the company. We curate; we don't broker.