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 http://joinhandshake.com/careers.