Handshake
Senior Staff Software Engineer, Content and Community
Handshake, San Francisco, California, United States, 94199
Senior Staff Software Engineer, Content and Community
Join to apply for the
Senior Staff Software Engineer, Content and Community
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Handshake Senior Staff Software Engineer, Content and Community
1 week ago Be among the first 25 applicants Join to apply for the
Senior Staff Software Engineer, Content and Community
role at
Handshake Get AI-powered advice on this job and more exclusive features. Your impact
At Handshake, we believe in the power of community to unlock opportunity for every student and recent grad. As a Senior Staff Software Engineer on our Content & Community team, you’ll architect and scale the backbone of our professional graph—powering how users connect, discover, and engage. Your work will directly shape the way millions of students and employers build networks, discover people and content, and find the right opportunities. You’ll drive the evolution of our people search, profile, and follow graph, and use cutting-edge AI to deliver personalized people recommendations and content feeds that make every connection meaningful. Your impact
At Handshake, we believe in the power of community to unlock opportunity for every student and recent grad. As a Senior Staff Software Engineer on our Content & Community team, you’ll architect and scale the backbone of our professional graph—powering how users connect, discover, and engage. Your work will directly shape the way millions of students and employers build networks, discover people and content, and find the right opportunities. You’ll drive the evolution of our people search, profile, and follow graph, and use cutting-edge AI to deliver personalized people recommendations and content feeds that make every connection meaningful.
Your role
Build the Social Graph: Design and implement scalable systems for our follow graph, enabling rich connections and powering people recommendations across Handshake. Deliver Personalized Experiences: Integrate LLM/AI and machine learning into our profile, people search, and feed experiences—ensuring every user receives relevant recommendations and content. Power the Feed: Own and evolve the backend for our social and content feeds, working cross-functionally with Staff Engineers and product teams to ensure the feed both reflects and shapes the user’s network and interests. Cross-Cutting Influence: Collaborate across teams to understand how user activity (e.g., likes, follows, feed engagement) influences recommendations and feed ranking, and vice versa—closing the loop between network growth and content discovery. Backend Leadership: Drive the design, implementation, and scaling of backend services and APIs that support people search, recommendations, and feed personalization at massive scale.
Your Experience
8+ years of backend software engineering experience, ideally working on social, community, or graph-based products; full stack development experience is a strong plus. Proven expertise with distributed systems, data modeling for social graphs, and building scalable APIs. Experience with machine learning or personalization systems, especially in the context of recommendations or feeds. Track record of collaborating with cross-functional partners (product, design, ML, and other engineering teams) to deliver impactful user-facing features. Experience designing and building large-scale search, social graph, or entity tagging (ET) systems.
Bonus areas of expertise
Deep experience with people search, profile systems, or social graph infrastructure. Familiarity with LLM/AI integration into user-facing features. Experience designing or scaling recommendation engines or ranking systems. Understanding of how user interactions (likes, follows, shares) influence feed and recommendation algorithms. Prior experience in social, or high-scale consumer platforms. Contributions to open-source graph or ML frameworks.
Seniority level
Seniority level Mid-Senior level Employment type
Employment type Full-time Job function
Job function Engineering and Information Technology Industries Software Development Referrals increase your chances of interviewing at Handshake by 2x Sign in to set job alerts for “Senior Staff Software Engineer” roles.
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Join to apply for the
Senior Staff Software Engineer, Content and Community
role at
Handshake Senior Staff Software Engineer, Content and Community
1 week ago Be among the first 25 applicants Join to apply for the
Senior Staff Software Engineer, Content and Community
role at
Handshake Get AI-powered advice on this job and more exclusive features. Your impact
At Handshake, we believe in the power of community to unlock opportunity for every student and recent grad. As a Senior Staff Software Engineer on our Content & Community team, you’ll architect and scale the backbone of our professional graph—powering how users connect, discover, and engage. Your work will directly shape the way millions of students and employers build networks, discover people and content, and find the right opportunities. You’ll drive the evolution of our people search, profile, and follow graph, and use cutting-edge AI to deliver personalized people recommendations and content feeds that make every connection meaningful. Your impact
At Handshake, we believe in the power of community to unlock opportunity for every student and recent grad. As a Senior Staff Software Engineer on our Content & Community team, you’ll architect and scale the backbone of our professional graph—powering how users connect, discover, and engage. Your work will directly shape the way millions of students and employers build networks, discover people and content, and find the right opportunities. You’ll drive the evolution of our people search, profile, and follow graph, and use cutting-edge AI to deliver personalized people recommendations and content feeds that make every connection meaningful.
Your role
Build the Social Graph: Design and implement scalable systems for our follow graph, enabling rich connections and powering people recommendations across Handshake. Deliver Personalized Experiences: Integrate LLM/AI and machine learning into our profile, people search, and feed experiences—ensuring every user receives relevant recommendations and content. Power the Feed: Own and evolve the backend for our social and content feeds, working cross-functionally with Staff Engineers and product teams to ensure the feed both reflects and shapes the user’s network and interests. Cross-Cutting Influence: Collaborate across teams to understand how user activity (e.g., likes, follows, feed engagement) influences recommendations and feed ranking, and vice versa—closing the loop between network growth and content discovery. Backend Leadership: Drive the design, implementation, and scaling of backend services and APIs that support people search, recommendations, and feed personalization at massive scale.
Your Experience
8+ years of backend software engineering experience, ideally working on social, community, or graph-based products; full stack development experience is a strong plus. Proven expertise with distributed systems, data modeling for social graphs, and building scalable APIs. Experience with machine learning or personalization systems, especially in the context of recommendations or feeds. Track record of collaborating with cross-functional partners (product, design, ML, and other engineering teams) to deliver impactful user-facing features. Experience designing and building large-scale search, social graph, or entity tagging (ET) systems.
Bonus areas of expertise
Deep experience with people search, profile systems, or social graph infrastructure. Familiarity with LLM/AI integration into user-facing features. Experience designing or scaling recommendation engines or ranking systems. Understanding of how user interactions (likes, follows, shares) influence feed and recommendation algorithms. Prior experience in social, or high-scale consumer platforms. Contributions to open-source graph or ML frameworks.
Seniority level
Seniority level Mid-Senior level Employment type
Employment type Full-time Job function
Job function Engineering and Information Technology Industries Software Development Referrals increase your chances of interviewing at Handshake by 2x Sign in to set job alerts for “Senior Staff Software Engineer” roles.
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San Francisco, CA $153,600.00-$264,000.00 2 weeks ago San Francisco, CA $204,000.00-$259,000.00 2 weeks ago Sr. Software Engineer - Payments Support
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San Francisco, CA $160,000.00-$260,000.00 1 month ago Staff Software Engineer / Tech Lead Manager
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San Francisco, CA $156,000.00-$211,000.00 1 day ago San Francisco, CA $204,000.00-$259,000.00 2 weeks ago Sr. Software Engineer - Investment Manager
San Francisco, CA $138,400.00-$173,000.00 2 weeks ago Senior Software Engineer, Simulation Tooling
South San Francisco, CA $170,000.00-$210,000.00 2 weeks ago Lead Software Engineer II, Machine Learning
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San Francisco, CA $184,000.00-$334,600.00 3 days ago Founding Team Senior Software Engineer Manager for a Social Travel Platform targeting Digital Nomads
San Francisco, CA $150,000.00-$200,000.00 3 months ago Principal Software Engineer- Input & Controls
San Mateo, CA $283,780.00-$331,640.00 1 week ago Senior Data Scientist - Credit & Lending
San Francisco, CA $119,800.00-$258,000.00 17 hours ago San Francisco, CA $130,000.00-$200,000.00 7 months ago San Francisco, CA $198,000.00-$220,000.00 21 hours ago South San Francisco, CA $160,000.00-$225,000.00 22 hours ago San Francisco, CA $165,000.00-$220,000.00 2 months ago San Francisco, CA $175,000.00-$230,000.00 4 months ago We’re unlocking community knowledge in a new way. Experts add insights directly into each article, started with the help of AI.
#J-18808-Ljbffr