Engineering Lead

Opportunity Overview

Handshake is looking for senior engineering leaders to support AI research through flexible, part-time contract work. This is not a traditional job. You’ll draw on your experience leading engineering teams and running multi-week or multi-month projects, across fields such as electrical, mechanical, civil, structural, industrial, chemical, controls, and aerospace engineering, to evaluate AI-generated work and provide feedback that helps AI reason like an experienced engineering lead. The Handshake AI program runs year-round, with project opportunities opening periodically across different areas of expertise.

This is an ongoing, project-based opportunity you can take on alongside your current role.

What You’ll Do

• Write the project briefs a lead would hand to a team, including scope, workstreams, and inputs, for engineering work that takes weeks or months to complete
• Create rubrics that evaluate the full set of deliverables for a project
• Review and evaluate AI-generated work on long, multi-step projects for technical accuracy, completeness, and alignment with how engineering work is actually run
• Provide clear, structured written feedback to help improve AI model performance
• Work remotely and complete tasks at your own pace, with no set schedule or minimum hour requirement

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience: At least 10 years of professional engineering experience in industry, including at least 5 years of hands-on engineering work, such as design, analysis, test, build, or commissioning
• Leadership experience: At least 3 years leading work in your own engineering field, as a team lead, manager, director, or project or program lead running multi-week or multi-month projects
• Domain: Experience in one or more of the following areas:
• Electrical, mechanical, civil, or structural engineering
• Industrial, manufacturing, or physical engineering
• Chemical and process engineering
• Controls and