Senior Engineering Manager, Reinforcement Learning Environments (RLE)

About Handshake

Handshake is the career network for the AI economy. 20 million knowledge workers, 1,600 educational institutions, 1 million employers (including 100% of the Fortune 50), and every foundational AI lab trust Handshake to power career discovery, hiring, and upskilling, from freelance AI training gigs to first internships to full-time careers and beyond. This unique value is leading to unparalleled growth; in 2025, we tripled our ARR at scale.

Why Join Handshake Now

* Shape how every career evolves in the AI economy, at global scale, with impact your friends, family and peers can see and feel

* Work hand-in-hand with world-class AI labs, Fortune 500 partners and the world’s top educational institutions

* Join a team with leadership from Scale AI, Meta, xAI, Notion, Coinbase, and Palantir, among others

* Build a massive, fast-growing business with billions in revenue

About The Role

We’re hiring a Senior Engineering Manager to lead our Reinforcement Learning Environments (RLE) team - the group building the interactive sandboxes where frontier models learn to complete real work.

RLE environments simulate end-to-end workflows across domains like software engineering, finance, and legal research, with realistic tools, constraints, and feedback loops. The platform generates high-signal interaction data researchers use to train and evaluate models for task completion, quality, and robustness.

This is a high-leverage role: the systems you lead directly shape what models can learn, how quickly new domains can launch, and how much researchers trust the signal. You’ll lead a team of ~9 engineers today and are expected to add leadership capacity (including managing an EM) as we scale.

Location: San Francisco, CA. This is an in-office role, 5 days/week (no remote/hybrid)

What You’ll Do

* Lead, hire, and develop a high-performing team building RL environments and the platform behind them

* Own the RLE roadmap and execution in close partnership with Research, Product, and Operations

* Drive architecture for scalable, reliable, extensible environment systems and data generation pipelines

* Build modular, plug-and-play domains that integrate cleanly with training and evaluation loops

* Raise the bar on reliability, observability, performance, and data quality

* Create a culture of ownership, speed, and strong engineering fundamentals in an ambiguity heavy setting

What We’re Looking For

* Engineering leader + builder: 3+ years managing teams, plus 5+ years hands-on engineering experience

* Strong people leadership: experience leading senior engineers; managing an EM (or equivalent scope) is a plus

* Execution in ambiguity: proven ability to align cross-functionally and deliver in fast-moving, unclear problem spaces

* Systems + product mindset: strong platform/distributed systems background, and the ability to turn research/ops needs into a clear roadmap, ship iteratively, and measure outcomes

Nice to Have

* Experience with RL training infrastructure, simulation systems, or evaluation platforms

* Human-in-the-loop systems (annotation, rubric tooling, QA pipelines, workflow platforms)

* Operations-heavy, tech-enabled environment experience

* Familiarity with AWS/GCP, APIs, Docker, and modern stacks (TypeScript/Node, React)

* Experience building systems used by applied ML or AI research teams

What Success Looks Like

* RLE becomes the default platform researchers use to train workflow-capable models

* New domains launch quickly and reliably with trusted quality gates

* Environment reliability + data quality are trusted inputs into training and evaluation decisions

* The team scales with strong leaders who can independently drive new verticals

* The platform measurably improves real-world task completion, robustness, and quality

Perks

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.

Compensation Range: $230K - $300K