Freelance Platform Engineer Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

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

As a Senior Platform Engineer at Handshake AI Enterprise, you'll own the infrastructure layer that makes everything else possible. Enterprise customers don't want their data in shared infrastructure — they want AI applications deployed inside their own environments, on their terms. You'll be the engineer who makes that happen, reliably and at speed.

You'll design and execute deployment patterns across VPC, on-prem, and self-hosted configurations, work directly with customer IT and security teams, and build the tooling that makes each new deployment faster than the last. Without you, nothing ships.

This is a founding-team level role with real technical complexity and direct customer impact — building the platform that Handshake AI Enterprise runs on.

• Own the infrastructure and deployment layer for AI applications shipped into enterprise customer environments
• Design and execute VPC, on-prem, and self-hosted deployment patterns across varying enterprise security requirements
• Work directly with customer IT and security teams to navigate compliance, data residency, and access control constraints
• Build tooling and automation that makes deployments repeatable and reliable across customers
• Collaborate closely with Product and Applied AI engineers on your deployment team
• Identify systemic gaps in infrastructure or process and lead initiatives to address them, reducing friction for future deployments
• Define the platform playbook for Handshake AI Enterprise as we scale to more customers and more complex environments

Desired Capabilities

• 5–6+ years of backend and infrastructure engineering experience
• Hands-on experience deploying applications into enterprise environments — VPC deployments, on-prem, and self-hosted configurations
• Deep understanding of enterprise security requirements: data segregation, access controls, compliance frameworks
• Experience working directly with external customers in a deployment or field engineering context
• Strong operational mindset — you care about reliability, observability, and repeatability at scale
• Comfort in ambiguous, fast-moving environments where the requirements are defined as you go

Extra Credit

• Experience at an infrastructure company that offers self-hosted or on-prem deployment options
• Familiarity with authentication, secrets management, and zero-trust networking
• Experience building internal deployment tooling or platform abstractions that improved team velocity
• Background working alongside applied AI or ML systems in production environments

Location: San Francisco, CA | 5 days/week in-office

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.