Director of Fellow Experience (Support), Handshake AI

Location: San Francisco or New York preferred (Hybrid)

Handshake is expanding into AI research and development, building a world-class network of expert Fellows—PhDs, researchers, and domain specialists—who contribute to cutting-edge advancements in machine learning. These Fellows are central to our product and mission, and we are building a high-touch support experience to match.

We're hiring a Director of Fellow Experience (Support) to establish and scale the entire Handshake AI Support function from the ground up. You’ll oversee a distributed team of 40+ support agents (via two Senior Managers) supporting our Fellows and internal teams, ensuring a white-glove experience while identifying operational bottlenecks, creating scalable systems, and shaping the tone and ethos of our support culture. This is a high-impact leadership role that requires deep operational expertise, a love of people-centric design, and a passion for building something that feels both efficient and human.

This is a critical hire—support is one of our most important levers for retaining our Fellows and ensuring their long-term success. You’ll collaborate closely with Product, Engineering, Growth, and Trust & Safety to create a seamless, human-centered experience that empowers Fellows to do their best work.

Your role

• Define and scale the Handshake AI support org—own vision, strategy, KPIs, and org design for a hybrid team of FTEs, contractors, and BPO partners
  

• Set the voice of support—craft the style guide, tone, and escalation policies that reflect our values: clarity, respect, transparency, and optimism
  

• Build systems for insight and influence—analyze volume trends, identify friction points, and share proactive reporting and recommendations across the org
  

• Lead and develop managers—coach and grow two Senior Support Managers and ensure their teams (totaling ~40 agents) are engaged, high-performing, and consistently delivering
  

• Drive operational excellence—maximize team efficiency through workflows, tooling, self-service, and automation without compromising quality
  

• Act as a cross-functional partner—align closely with Product, AI Ops, Trust & Safety, and others to advocate for Fellow needs and shape the broader experience
  

• Build from scratch—design and launch onboarding, training, help content, playbooks, staffing models, and performance frameworks in a rapidly evolving space
  

• Act as a strategic voice—contribute to Handshake AI’s growth strategy, roadmap feedback loops, and annual planning cycles

Your experience

• 7–10+ years in support or operations leadership roles, including at least 3+ years managing managers (with multiple teams and staff types)
  

• Built or scaled support functions in high-growth, ambiguous environments (bonus: consumer or marketplace tech, community-driven platforms, or AI/ML)
  

• Deep knowledge of Zendesk, QA tooling (e.g., Playvox), data platforms (BigQuery, Looker, Google Sheets/SQL), and help center technologies
  

• Strong strategic and analytical skills—you can identify patterns in chaos, prioritize what matters most, and articulate your thinking with data
  

• Experience driving support-led retention outcomes and influencing revenue
  

• Built teams known for empathy, accountability, and transparency—even in sensitive or high-stakes environments
  

• Operationally excellent: You can scope, implement, and optimize systems for onboarding, reporting, staffing, and cross-functional workflows

Bonus Areas of Expertise

• Prior experience supporting AI/LLM products, high-churn risk users, or sensitive communities
  

• Built or managed global BPO/vendor teams and driven high CSAT/NPS in distributed environments
  

• Owned or influenced help center content strategy, chatbot flows, and automations
  

• Experience in a startup or consumer product with high engagement and retention

Traits we are looking for

• Builder mindset – You don’t just optimize, you create from 0→1 and know what excellent looks like
  

• Human-first leader – You care deeply about user and team experience and know how to scale both
  

• Strategic operator – You can zoom out to shape a long-term vision and zoom in to fix what’s broken
  

• Data-informed and decisive – You seek truth through numbers but move quickly and intentionally
  

• Collaborative and communicative – You’re a trusted partner to leaders across the business and know how to bring people along
  

• Mission-driven – You care about equitable opportunity, transparency, and building for impact

Compensation range

$188,000 - $235,000 + RSUs for SF/NY

For cash compensation, we set standard ranges for all U.S.-based roles based on function, level, and geographic location, benchmarked against similar stage growth companies. In order to be compliant with local legislation, as well as to provide greater transparency to candidates, we share salary ranges on all job postings regardless of desired hiring location. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including geographic location as well as candidate experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above.

About us

Handshake is building the future of human data for AI.

We partner directly with top AI labs to power large language model (LLM) training and evaluation with high-quality, expert-generated data. As AI models become more sophisticated, the demand for specialized human input continues to grow—and Handshake is uniquely positioned to meet it. We power career platforms at 92% of the top U.S. universities, giving us direct access to verified expert talent across a wide range of domains.

Our AI team is rapidly building a new generation of human data products—from expert annotation platforms to AI interviewers and seamless payout infrastructure—all designed to accelerate research and improve model performance.

We’ve assembled a world-class team from YC, Notion, Scale, Coinbase, Palantir, and more, and we’re working directly with many of the world’s leading AI research labs. This is a unique opportunity to join a fast-growing team shaping the future of AI through better data, better tools, and better systems—for experts, by experts.