Fellow Experience Specialist (Contract)

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 1,600 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. We’ve 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 world’s 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 Handshake is expanding into AI research and development, building a world-class network of expert Fellows - PhDs, researchers, and subject matter specialists - who contribute to cutting-edge AI through specialized research, model evaluation, and domain-specific applications. Handshake is looking to bring on a Handshake AI Fellow Experience Specialist (Flexible Schedule), Contractor to provide payments, contracts, and general support to our Handshake AI Fellows. This role follows a flexible schedule where team members work 5 days per week, including Saturdays and Sundays, with 2 weekdays off. Reporting to one of our Handshake AI Fellow Experience Managers, this role is a 6 month contract with the possibility of contract extension or conversion to a permanent role upon evaluation of fit for the role and company needs. If you are resourceful and attuned to detail, love digging into a complex and technical product, building strong relationships with customers and team members, and solving a wide variety of questions, bugs, and workflow needs - this is the role for you! This is not a typical support job where you’ll exclusively work on tickets; it’s an opportunity to make Handshake AI feel like the premier destination for experts looking to challenge the boundaries of AI. You’ll have opportunities to interact with both Handshake leadership and our expert network directly. You will work closely with our Handshake AI Ops, Finance, Product, Engineering, and Projects teams to provide efficient and effective support, and contribute to an overall seamless experience for Fellows. You will primarily focus on general Handshake AI support, help unblock our users, share trends and learnings with the Handshake AI Team, and continue to improve the customer experience and our team operations. As an advocate for our Fellows, you’ll improve the Handshake AI experience and make an impact on our mission to build the infrastructure for the next era of human-AI collaboration. Exceptional team members may have the ability to grow their career into new roles across the Handshake AI team. - Contribute 40 hours per week across a 5-day schedule that includes Saturdays and Sundays, with 2 flexible weekdays off, and occasional overtime as needed. Provide amazing email, zoom, and/or phone support to Handshake AI Fellows via email, internal ticketing systems, and other channels. Your day-to-day will consist of: - 80%: resolving questions and disputes, removing or updating contracts reporting bugs, sharing feedback, and other general inquiries. You’ll typically handle up to 75-100 tickets per day. - 10% on priority initiatives or improving business process - 5%: attending team meetings (1-3 per week) - 5%: completing administrative tasks (emails, checking daily announcements, training, etc.) - Tickets will involve highly technical troubleshooting and workflows, building and troubleshooting custom reports using Google Sheets, and/or BigQuery, and making sure to provide tailored, personal responses while building relationships - Use app environments, troubleshooting tools, internal and external documentation, and team communication channels, to find the quality answer for a wide range of users - Maintain a standard level of excellence in regards to response times, resolution times, equal share of queue, and the quality of the customer support experience - Be both a support specialist and an experienced consultant for Fellows - Utilize internal tools to manage issues between Operations, Finance, Product, Engineering, Project, and Support teams - Analyze common issues that Fellows have and coordinate with our Product and Ops teams to ideate and implement solutions DESIRED CAPABILITIES - 1 - 3 years of customer success experience, Sales Development Representative or similar experience - BI tools: Experience with or strong aptitude to quickly learn Big Query, SQL, Google Sheets advanced formulas and analysis, and Looker to pull payment and project data and compare with our tracking systems - Self-Starter: Excited to approach new challenges and have a high bar for personal excellence - Technical Aptitude: Ability to learn technical tools and concepts quickly - Resilience: Comfort with change and ambiguity. We’re a growing startup and always refining processes, tools, etc! - Teamwork: Connects with teammates and actively builds a sense of community on the Handshake AI and Support teams. Collaborates with manager and colleagues and team on daily or weekly guidance on ticket workflows and prioritization. - Communication: Excellent verbal and written communication skills with a clear ability to communicate complex topics with simple language. - Results oriented and ownership: Ability to maintain or exceed ticket and quality goals. High level of self accountability and integrity for processes and metrics. - Passion for the problem: Desire to help give people the chance to build the career they want, no matter where they're from or what school they attend - EQ: A strong sense of empathy with users of our products and cross functional partners - Critical Thinking: High attention to detail and ability to troubleshoot with limited information and a clear plan of action. - Expertise and Curiosity: Retains knowledge, shows ability to partially solve issues independently, and asks questions to increase personal knowledge. Isn’t afraid to do independent research on third party tools and systems to find answers. - Growth Mindset: Positive, eager to learn, utilizes resources, takes and gives feedback, connects with support team and key cross team stakeholders. - Diversity and Inclusion: Eagerness to contribute to and help build a diverse and inclusive team and exhibit these values internally and externally with customers or users. - Coverage: Can provide a regular schedule to provide consistent assistance to users. Based in the U.S. and is not a current student. EXTRA CREDIT - Big Query, SQL, Google Sheets/Excel, Deel, and/or Hubstaff experience - ZenDesk experience - AI/LLM usage and training Experience - Previous experience working in an Enterprise SaaS Customer Support team at a fast-paced startup or hypergrowth tech company, or customer focused position involving technical knowledge of a company's products and services - Relevant experience in cross - functional communication or close partnerships with various teams (Success, Sales, Product etc) PERKS 1. Food credit for every in person day 2. Note: The role is a contractual full time role 3. No visa sponsorship available