Manager, R&D Strategy & Operations at Handshake — San Francisco, CA

About Handshake

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

About the Role

The Strategy & Operations Manager for R&D will extend Handshake's S&O function into the frontier of AI development. Primarily deployed in Handshake AI (HAI), this person works at the intersection of the most consequential and fast-moving work in the company: scalable reinforcement learning environments, systematic quality frameworks for training frontier models, and large-scale coding projects pushing the boundaries of what AI can do on a massive, real-world problem set.

This is not a program management role and it's not a permanent execution owner. It's a force multiplier: someone who deploys to wherever the business problem is most urgent, builds the operating system to make it self-sustaining, and moves on. They work alongside the R&D S&O leader to extend strategic reach across two business units with different operational needs and up level how teams across R&D operate with AI in their toolkit.

Your Role

• Deploy to the highest-priority initiatives across R&D, build the operating structure for each sprint, and hand off when it's self-sustaining
• Build trusted relationships with engineering and product leads; be informed enough to push back and credible enough to be heard
• Identify process and tooling friction across R&D and own the playbooks to fix it, including agentification of manual workflows
• Run org-wide operating rhythms, including quarterly planning, execution rhythms, org comms, and cross-team reporting
• Escalate to the S&O lead with context and a point of view, and a plan

Desired Capabilities

• 6–8+ years 6 to 8 years in strategy & operations, chief of staff, or a hybrid role in a fast-moving R&D driven environment
• Proven track record deploying across complex, multi-team organizations and building operating systems that outlast their involvement
• Strategic range to move fluidly between a technical AI research environment and a consumer marketplace without losing effectiveness
• High judgment under ambiguity: goes to where the problem is, not where the job description points
• Executive presence to operate alongside senior leaders and push back when something is at risk
• AI-fluent operator who uses the latest tools and is excited to build the agentification playbook for others
• Relationship-builder who earns trust quickly across engineering, product, and design stakeholders

Perks