Software Engineer II, Reinforcement Learning Environments
Department:
Job Summary
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 1600 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. Weve 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 worlds 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.
We are building our India team to help accelerate the development of frontier models. This team is a critical strategic investment for us - we have grown the team 3x in the past six months to help fuel our next phase of growth. India-based teammates will work hand-in-hand with US-based teams to scope execute and deliver critical human data projects to Frontier Labs and other customers.
About the Role
Were hiring a Software Engineer II to help build our Reinforcement Learning Environments (RLE) platformthe interactive systems where frontier AI models learn to complete real-world work.
RLE environments simulate end-to-end workflows across domains like software engineering finance legal research and business operations with realistic tools constraints and feedback loops. The interaction data generated powers the training and evaluation of the worlds leading AI models.
As part of our growing engineering organization in India youll partner closely with Engineering Research Product and Operations teams in the US to build the platforms powering the next generation of AI. Youll own meaningful technical projects contribute to platform architecture and help build reliable systems that enable researchers to rapidly develop and evaluate frontier AI models.
Location: Bengaluru India. This is an in-office role.
What Youll Do
Design build and scale our Reinforcement Learning Environments (RLE) platform and the infrastructure that powers it
Partner closely with Engineering Research Product and Operations teams in the US to execute against a shared roadmap
Design and implement scalable backend services and data generation pipelines
Build modular environment domains that integrate seamlessly with model training and evaluation workflows
Improve platform reliability observability performance and developer productivity
Participate in technical design discussions and contribute to architecture decisions
Write high-quality maintainable code while helping improve engineering standards and best practices
What Were Looking For
3 years of professional software engineering experience building backend systems distributed systems or platform infrastructure
Strong proficiency with TypeScript React and modern backend architectures
Strong understanding of PostgreSQL data modeling distributed systems and system design
Experience building and operating production systems on AWS or GCP
Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to thrive in fast-moving ambiguous environments
Experience collaborating effectively with globally distributed engineering teams including teams based in the US
Nice to Have
Experience with reinforcement learning infrastructure simulation systems or AI evaluation platforms
Experience building internal developer platforms or workflow orchestration systems
Familiarity with Docker Kubernetes and CI/CD pipelines
Experience supporting applied ML or AI research teams
Experience working in a fast-growing startup or high-growth engineering organization
What Success Looks Like
Reinforcement Learning Environments become a trusted platform powering the next generation of AI model training
New environments launch quickly with high-quality scalable infrastructure
Systems are reliable observable and built to support rapid iteration
You become a trusted engineering partner across the India and US teams helping deliver critical platform capabilities
Youll Thrive Here If You:
Are motivated by solving operational problems that have direct measurable impact.
Want to be part of a company shaping the future of AI through human data.
Can navigate ambiguity act with urgency and keep multiple workstreams moving in parallel.
Perks:
Generous Equity Grant vested over 4 years
Housing Bonus: 1.3 Lakhs spread throughout the first year
Well Defined Performance Bonus ranging between 10 - 100% of base
Medical Insurance Coverage
Food credit for every in person day.
Required Experience:
IC
About Company
The better career platform for Gen Z changing how, where, and why the next generation of talent builds their career.