Senior Software Engineer - AI Data (USA)

ABOUT THE ROLE

Frontier AI labs are building coding agents that do real engineering work. Before these coding agents ship, Senior Engineers have to work a real problem from a codebase they know, step by step, to identify where a frontier model goes wrong then correct it.

Not just anyone can do this. It takes a select group of engineers with experience and taste.

Engineers who qualify join a fixed-pay contract: earn $6,000/wk for 40hrs of work ($150/hr). Work on your own schedule, paid weekly.

What you'll do

• Judge the AI's work. Give an agent a real ticket, then review its output like a teammate's pull request: run it, evaluate it.
• Pair with the AI on your own task. Work a real problem from a codebase you know, step by step, and flag where the model goes wrong.

What's in it for you

• Senior-engineer pay. A weekly contract paying $6,000 for a 40-hour week. Work from anywhere, any time.
• Work that lasts. This is not a two-week gig. The work is here month after month, and the 40 hours are yours every week you're on the team.
• An elite, hand-picked team. You’ll have priority access to the projects frontier labs trust us with, the ones every engineer wants a seat on.
• Problems that are actually hard. Your work on difficult tasks goes straight back to the labs training the next best-in-class models.
• A seat at the table. You'll work directly with project leads from day one. Your read on where models fail and where the bar should sit shapes how we run these programs.
• Ongoing, on your schedule. The contract renews every week while you meet quality standards. You set your hours. Exceptional engineers may be approved for additional hours, paid at $150/hr on top of your base earnings.
• Support that meets your needs. A dedicated team, fast answers, and real feedback on your work.

How it works

1. Pass a proctored coding assessment, without the use of AI tools. You’ll earn $100 when you pass. About 2 hours.
2. Complete one paid trial task. You’ll earn $40 when you submit your first stage and $1,100 once it's approved through every review cycle. About 10 hours total.
3. Join the team and continue working. We’ll provide 40 hours of work every week, totalling $6,000.

You're a fit if you have

• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience
• A Bachelor's or Master’s degree in computer science or a related field
• US work authorization
• Strong written English and 40 hours a week to give during your contract
• No AI background needed. Your software engineering skills are the whole job.

About Handshake

Handshake was founded on a simple belief that everyone deserves a path to a great career, regardless of where they went to school or who they know. Today, we power 25 million job seekers, 1 million+ employers, and 1,600 educational institutions.

In 2025, we started Handshake AI and built the fastest-growing AI data business in history. We work directly with frontier AI lab researchers to create evaluations, publish benchmarks, and push the boundary of data. We’ve grown from $0 to ~$1B run rate and pay ~$60M to over 30K individuals every month.

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
• Partner hand-in-hand with world-class AI labs, Fortune 500 partners and the world’s top educational institutions
• Work together with engineers, scientists, operators, and more from Palantir, Meta, Scale AI, and former YC founders
• Build a massive, fast-growing business with billions in revenue

About Handshake AI

Human data is the core infrastructure to AI advancement. Frontier AI labs currently improve model capabilities with various data-intensive post-training techniques. We believe that data spend for AI training will increase by 3-5x in the next few years and continue for much longer as models take on new domains. Handshake AI supports all of the frontier AI labs, working on their most complex data at the largest scale.