Senior Software Engineer, Content and Community

About the position

As a Senior Software Engineer on our Content and Community team, you'll play a critical role in enhancing Handshake's platform for students, job-seekers, and employers. Your work will directly contribute to shaping the experiences that connect millions of students to career opportunities, all while driving user engagement and fostering a thriving community. You'll develop systems that support content creation, discovery, and sharing within the Handshake ecosystem, helping students build valuable professional networks. This is an opportunity to work on impactful, mission-driven projects that democratize access to opportunity, working with cutting-edge technologies and scaling systems to handle millions of users.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate cross-functionally with product managers, designers, and other engineers to build and scale new features for content discovery, community engagement, and personalized recommendations.
• Build, maintain, and scale high-quality, high-performance backend and frontend systems that support content creation, sharing, and collaboration.
• Contribute to product roadmaps, help define priorities, and provide technical leadership on key projects impacting the community and content features.
• Own the end-to-end architecture of the content and community platform, designing scalable, reliable, and efficient systems.
• Support junior engineers by providing technical mentorship, reviewing code, and fostering a culture of collaboration and growth.
• Define and experiment with hypotheses to optimize the platform, driving higher user engagement and satisfaction.
• Write clean, maintainable, and testable code, participate in code reviews, and provide thoughtful feedback.

Requirements

• 7+ years as a full-stack engineer with a strong focus on both backend and frontend development.
• Proficiency in backend technologies such as Ruby on Rails, Go, Python, or Node.js.
• Strong experience with modern web technologies like React, JavaScript, or TypeScript, and familiarity with mobile technologies (Swift, React Native).
• Experience designing and building complex, scalable systems that handle high traffic and large volumes of user-generated content.
• Proven ability to work effectively across teams, including product, design, data, and marketing.
• Demonstrated experience in developing user-facing features that prioritize usability, performance, and engagement.
• Experience mentoring junior engineers, helping them grow both technically and professionally.
• Ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Benefits

• Equity and ownership in a fast-growing company.
• 16 Weeks of paid parental leave for birth giving parents & 10 weeks of paid parental leave for non-birth giving parents.
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision policies including LGBTQ+ Coverage.
• Resources for Mental Health Assistance, Employee Assistance Programs and counseling support.
• $500/£360 home office stipend for your first 3 months.
• Generous learning & development opportunities and an annual $2,000/£1,500/€1,850 stipend.
• Financial coaching through Origin.
• Monthly internet stipend and a brand new MacBook.
• Monthly commuter stipend for office-based employees.
• Free lunch provided twice a week across all offices.
• Referral bonus for bringing great talent to Handshake.