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# Associate Software Engineer, Operator Experience

- **Company:** Handshake
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA, United States
- **Experience:** Starter
- **Salary:** $35,100.0 - $39,000.0
- **Contract:** Internship / Graduate position
- **Skills:** Code Review, Software Engineering, Code Testing
- **Published:** August 10, 2026
- **Apply:** https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=1e74eefd7b939ae5

## About the Role

* 0-2 years of software engineering experience, with some experience owning features or small projects from implementation through production support.
 * Good communication skills and comfort working with non-engineering stakeholders.
 * Exposure to building internal tools, workflow systems, or automation (through internships, previous roles, or side projects) is a plus.
 * Growing engineering judgment: able to write clean, scalable code with guidance, and eager to learn how to make good abstraction and design tradeoffs.
 * Curiosity and adaptability in ambiguous environments, with a track record of shipping incremental improvements.

Extra Credit

 * Exposure to workflow/backlog systems, intake processes, or operational analytics (instrumentation, dashboards, QA).
 * Interest in operating in a fast-paced, embedded-engineering environment.
 * Coursework, projects, or prior experience touching knowledge-work operations tooling (e.g., case management, review/approval flows, data quality tooling).

## Description

As a Software Engineer on Operating Tooling, you'll build internal products and automation that help Handshake's operators run the business at high quality and speed. This team functions like an embedded/consulting engineering group: you'll partner directly with operators, learn their workflows, and help ship new operational capabilities.

This role is collaborative and communication-heavy. Success requires solid technical fundamentals plus good EQ-someone who can take clearly-scoped operational needs and turn them into reliable, well-built systems, iterating based on feedback from operators and senior engineers.

In this role, you will:

 * Work with operators (with support from senior engineers) to understand processes and pain points, and help translate them into technical requirements.
 * Build internal tools, automations, and workflows that improve operational throughput, accuracy, and visibility.
 * Own well-scoped projects or features end-to-end: implementation, testing, rollout, and iteration, with guidance on discovery and technical design.
 * Write maintainable, well-tested code and follow established engineering practices for the internal-tools environment.
 * Collaborate with cross-functional partners (operators, engineering, product) to gather feedback and drive adoption of the tools you build.
 * Seek feedback proactively and grow your technical judgment through code review and pairing with more senior engineers.


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