Senior Product Manager, Consumer Growth

About Handshake

Handshake is building the career network for the AI economy, backed by the largest and most trusted job network on the internet. As the only three-sided job marketplace connecting 18 million knowledge workers, 1,500 educational institutions, and 1 million employers, Handshake powers career discovery, hiring, and upskilling—from first internships to full-time roles, freelance work to gig work, and beyond.

Founded in 2014, we’ve built the most trusted platform for early talent—owning the college-to-career market and powering nearly every career center. Today we’re building on that foundation to help students and early professionals upskill or reskill for the future.

Now’s a great time to join Handshake. Here’s why:

• Category Leader: Over 92% coverage across US universities & 77% of total US university student population.

• Proven Market Demand: Deep employer partnerships across Fortune 500s and the world’s leading AI research labs.

• World-Class Team: Leadership from Scale AI, Open AI, xAI, Notion, Coinbase, and Palantir, just to name a few.

• Capitalized & Scaling: $434M raised with a $175M+ run rate.

About the Role

In this role, you’ll build and scale Handshake’s Acquisition Growth function from the ground up—crafting bold, top-of-funnel strategies and launching new growth engines that dramatically expand our reach and bring millions more early-career users into the Handshake community.

You'll own experimentation and channel performance—from SEO, content, referrals, social, influencers, partnerships, and paid campaigns—and improve conversion across the sign-up funnel through to activation. It’s our job to make sure any user that comes across our platform is set up for success and you’ll help them get there. What you’ll own –

• Strategic Roadmap Ownership: Define and own the acquisition roadmap, aligning with cross-functional teams (engineering, design, marketing) to optimize our activation funnels.

• Experimentation & Optimization: Lead rapid testing cycles (A/B/n, landing pages, viral loops), analyze engagement and conversion, prioritizing rapid iterations that drive impact.

• Channel Expansion: Identify and validate new growth channels—organic and paid. Scale the ones with high ROI.

• Referral & Viral Mechanics: Design, test, and optimize referral programs, invite networks, ambassador initiatives, and viral loops.

• Cross-Functional Partnership: Collaborate closely with performance marketing, brand, content, data science, and product engineering to align acquisition levers.

• Analytics & Insights: Define KPIs and measurement frameworks (CAC, LTV, CTR, CVR, activation), set up dashboards, own tracking and iteration cycles.

Desired Capabilities

• Customer expert. You understand the needs of your customer better than anyone else and prioritize them everywhere, grounding your approach in data and research.

• Marketplace Fluent. You think holistically across the different user types and their respective incentives in a marketplace to create “matched”, end-to-end, successful products.

• Strong systems and analytical thinker. Can connect the dots, spot challenges and edge cases, integrate multiple considerations.

• Experience launching and managing a consumer social product with 1M+ active users.

• Expert at using data for tactical and strategic decisioning, goal setting, and iterating quickly.

• Experience running statistically sound experiments with clear hypothesis, analysis and iteration.

• Excellent communicator. Able to present to internal teams, stakeholders, and executive leadership with clarity.

• Cross-functional leadership. Worked deeply with engineering, design, data, and marketing teams to create shared goals and drive urgency across your charter.

Extra Credit

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

• Passionate about early career Gen Z audiences or educational/social products.

• Mobile-first experience in high-growth consumer tech companies

• Experience in marketplaces, network effects, or multi-sided platforms.

• Familiarity with product-led growth strategies and tactics.

Perks

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: Stipends for home office setup, internet, commuting, and free lunch/gym in our SF office

🏝 Time Off: Flexible PTO, 15 holidays + 2 flex days, winter #ShakeBreak where our whole office closes for a week!

🤝 Connection: Team outings & referral bonuses

Explore our mission, values, and comprehensive US benefits at joinhandshake.com/careers.