VP of Product, Handshake AI

**About Handshake** Handshake is the career network for the AI economy. 25 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 Handshake AI** Handshake AI is the fastest-growing, most critical, and most revenue-generating part of Handshake's business. We power expert-labeled data collection at scale, matching domain experts with leading AI companies to train frontier models—and we're already a top-three player in one of the fastest-growing sectors in AI: human data. We have the opportunity to do for the AI data economy what LinkedIn did for professional networking: become the default platform where the work happens. **About The Role** We're hiring a VP of Product to lead product for Handshake AI. This is not a "head of" role in name only—you will be the product leader for one of the fastest-growing AI startups in the country, owning the strategy, roadmap, and execution that determines how fast and how well we scale. You'll sit at the center of a business that is compounding quickly: new customers, new data modalities, a growing operator and fellow ecosystem, and an increasingly complex set of platform needs. Your job is to turn that complexity into a coherent product organization—one with clear strategy, strong PM talent, and a roadmap that keeps pace with (and gets ahead of) the business. You'll report into the CPO, sit on the senior team, and partner directly with Engineering, Design, Operations, and Sales/Customer leadership to shape where Handshake AI goes next. What You'll Own **Product Strategy & Vision.** Set the product strategy for Handshake AI as a whole—across data modalities, the operator and fellow platforms, and customer-facing surfaces. Translate "become the career network and data engine for the AI economy" into a concrete, sequenced roadmap. **Team Leadership.** Build, lead, and grow a product organization of PMs across modalities and platform pods (e.g., Operator Experience, Fellow Experience, modality-specific pods like Coding). Hire exceptional product talent, set the bar for craft and rigor, and develop the managers and ICs on your team. **Cross-Functional Partnership.** Be the connective tissue between Engineering, Design, Operations, and GTM. Ensure the product org's priorities reflect both what customers need and what will scale the business fastest, and that trade-offs across pods are made coherently rather than in silos. **Executive-Level Prioritization.** Make and own the hard calls: which modalities to invest in, which platform capabilities to build now vs. later, and where to say no. Communicate strategy and trade-offs clearly to the exec team and the board. **Metrics & Accountability.** Define what success looks like for the product org—revenue enablement, quality outcomes, operator/fellow efficiency, time-to-launch for new modalities and customers—and hold the org accountable to it. **Customer & Market Fluency.** Spend real time with AI labs, enterprise customers, and internal stakeholders to understand how the market is evolving. Use that fluency to keep Handshake AI ahead of where the human-data category is heading, not just responsive to it. **Scaling the Platform.** Ensure the underlying product and operational platform can flex to new customer types, data types, and volumes—so growth in revenue doesn't require linear growth in headcount or one-off engineering. Desired Capabilities - 12+ years in product management, including 4+ years as a senior product leader managing other PMs and managers, ideally at a high-growth startup. - Experience owning product for a business (or major business line) growing quickly, with a demonstrated ability to build strategy and org structure that scale with revenue. - Strong operational intuition—you've built or overseen platforms for internal users, operations teams, or complex two-sided marketplaces, not just consumer-facing features. - Track record hiring and developing product talent, including PMs who own ambiguous, 0→1 problem spaces. - Systems thinker who can hold a multi-modality, multi-stakeholder roadmap in their head and make coherent trade-offs across it. - Comfortable operating in high ambiguity: the market, the customer needs, and the product surface area are all still being defined. - Data-informed but action-oriented—you use metrics to prioritize, but you move with conviction when the signal is directional rather than definitive. - Excellent executive communication; you can represent product strategy credibly to the C-suite, the board, and customers. Bonus Points - Experience in human data, annotation/labeling, RLHF, or AI training data ecosystems. - Experience building or scaling a marketplace or platform business (two-sided, operator/worker-facing, or similar). - Prior experience at a fast-growing AI lab, data company, or enterprise SaaS company through a period of hypergrowth. - Experience building career, talent, or workforce products. We Offer 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: $340K - $380K