Principal Product Manager, Careers

About Handshake

Handshake is the career network built for the AI economy. With 20 million knowledge workers, 1,600 educational institutions, 1 million employers—including 100% of the Fortune 50—and every major AI lab trusting Handshake to power career discovery, hiring, and upskilling, we sit at the intersection of talent and opportunity at a pivotal moment in history. From freelance AI training gigs to first internships to full-time careers, Handshake is where professional journeys begin and evolve. That unique position is driving extraordinary growth: in 2025, we tripled our ARR at scale.

Why Join Handshake Now

The AI economy is reshaping how people work, learn, and grow—and Handshake is at the center of it. Here, you'll have the rare opportunity to shape how careers evolve for an entire generation, at global scale, with impact your friends, family, and peers can see and feel. You'll work hand-in-hand with top educational institutions, Fortune 500 partners, and world-class AI labs, while building a fast-growing business with billions in revenue on the horizon. This is one of those moments where the right company, the right mission, and the right timing converge.

Your Role

As a Principal Product Manager on the Careers team, you'll own the full early-funnel experience—from the moment a user first discovers Handshake to the point where they're genuinely active and finding value on the platform. That means leading both acquisition and activation: bringing millions of early-career professionals into our community and ensuring they reach their "aha moment" as quickly as possible.

This role is built for a seasoned product leader who has been in the arena—someone who has scaled consumer products, navigated ambiguity at pace, and developed strong intuitions about what makes people come back. You'll bring a creative edge and a bias toward action, while maintaining the analytical rigor needed to make high-stakes decisions confidently. You'll define the roadmap, run high-velocity experiments, and partner across engineering, design, marketing, and data to build the growth engines that power Handshake's next chapter.

What You'll Own

Acquisition Strategy. Define and own the roadmap for bringing new users to Handshake—across SEO, content, social, referral, influencer, paid, and partnership channels. Identify what's working, double down fast, and never stop looking for the next unlocked channel.

Activation & Onboarding. Own the experience from sign-up through first meaningful engagement. Design and optimize onboarding flows that reduce friction, drive habit formation, and get users to value faster—because growth without activation is just churn waiting to happen.

Experimentation at Velocity. Lead a high-cadence experimentation program across landing pages, onboarding sequences, viral mechanics, and conversion touchpoints. Build a culture of fast learning—clear hypotheses, clean analysis, rapid iteration.

Referral & Viral Mechanics. Design and scale referral programs, invite networks, ambassador initiatives, and viral loops that turn satisfied users into Handshake's most effective growth channel.

Cross-Functional Leadership. Partner closely with performance marketing, brand, content, data science, and product engineering to align on goals, move with urgency, and hold each other accountable to outcomes.

Analytics & Measurement. Own the metrics that matter—CAC, CTR, CVR, activation rate, LTV—and build the dashboards and feedback loops that keep the team oriented around impact.

Your Experience

You're a seasoned product leader with at least 7 years of experience building products that real people love and return to. You've operated at scale in consumer-facing environments, developed strong growth instincts, and know how to balance creative ambition with disciplined execution. You've led teams and workstreams, earned the trust of cross-functional partners, and have a track record of shipping work that meaningfully moves the needle.

Specifically, you bring:

• 7+ years of product management experience, with the majority in consumer-facing roles at scale

• Deep expertise in both acquisition and activation—you've owned the full early funnel and have the results to show for it

• Experience building and scaling consumer products with millions of active users, ideally in social, marketplace, or network-driven environments

• Expert-level fluency with data—for goal setting, decisioning, and rapid iteration—paired with strong product intuition built from years of watching users behave in unexpected ways

• A proven track record running statistically rigorous experiments, with the discipline to kill ideas that don't work and the conviction to double down on ones that do

• Strong cross-functional leadership, having worked as a true partner to engineering, design, data, and marketing—not just a coordinator

• Executive-level communication skills, including the ability to frame complex tradeoffs and present with clarity and conviction to senior leadership

Ideal Candidate

The ideal candidate has been here before—they've scaled a consumer product, navigated the chaos of high growth, and come out the other side with strong instincts and hard-won lessons. They move fast without cutting corners, bring creative energy without losing analytical rigor, and know that the best growth strategies create genuine value for users, not just numbers on a dashboard.

You understand that in a marketplace like Handshake, acquisition and activation are inseparable—you're not just filling the top of the funnel, you're building a community. You're energized by the scale of the opportunity, you're comfortable owning outcomes end-to-end, and you're motivated by the knowledge that the work you do here will shape the professional futures of millions of people navigating one of the most transformative periods in the history of work.

Bonus Points

• Direct experience at high-growth consumer tech companies

• Mobile-first product experience in fast-moving, user-centric environments

• Hands-on expertise in top-of-funnel tactics: SEO/content, referral and viral loops, paid channels, registration optimization, and partnerships

• Familiarity with product-led growth, network effects, or multi-sided platform dynamics

• A genuine passion for early-career audiences, the future of work, or the intersection of AI and human potential
  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.