Freelance Rendering 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

Handshake AI Enterprise is a new business unit building AI-powered applications for the world's largest companies. We deploy small, expert teams directly into enterprise environments — deeply learning each customer's business, defining where AI can drive real impact, and building and iterating on agents that automate their most critical workflows. We're not a consulting firm and we're not selling software. We're building and deploying AI that measurably changes how enterprises operate.

We're looking for a Senior Frontend Engineer who wants to architect the foundation — not just build on top of it.

As our first senior frontend hire, you'll define how we build UI across the entire team. That means establishing the component system, design language, and engineering patterns that every engineer who comes after you will rely on. You'll set the technical bar, make the foundational decisions, and build in a way that scales — so others can move fast without sacrificing quality.

This is a rare opportunity to own the frontend architecture of a new product from zero, at a company with the data, lab relationships, and momentum to win.

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

• Architect the frontend foundation for Handshake AI Enterprise — component system, design tokens, patterns, and engineering conventions that the whole team builds on

• Make foundational technology decisions: framework choices, state management, rendering strategy, performance budgets

• Build shared libraries and abstractions that let other engineers move fast without reinventing the wheel or sacrificing quality

• Establish code standards, review practices, and documentation that scale as the team grows

• Collaborate closely with Applied AI and Platform engineers to define clean API contracts and integration patterns

• Ship production-grade UI for enterprise customer deployments alongside building the foundation

• Evolve the architecture over time as the team, product, and customer base scales

Desired Capabilities

• 5–6+ years of frontend engineering experience with a strong architectural track record

• Deep expertise in ReactJS and TypeScript — you understand the tradeoffs, not just the syntax

• Proven experience building and maintaining shared component libraries or design systems used by other engineers

• Strong opinions on frontend architecture — state management, rendering patterns, performance, accessibility — and the ability to defend and evolve them

• Experience making technology decisions that others depend on, with an eye toward long-term maintainability

• Comfort working in ambiguous, fast-moving environments where the right answer isn't always obvious

• Strong communication skills — you'll need to align engineers, product, and design on how things get built

Extra Credit

• Experience building frontend architecture for AI-powered or data-intensive applications

• Background at a company known for high craft — you've seen what a great design system looks like from the inside

• History of writing technical documentation or guides that helped other engineers ramp quickly

• Experience with performance optimization, accessibility standards, or cross-platform rendering at scale

• Familiarity with enterprise deployment environments or security constraints

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: $205K - $300K