Finance Manager
External
Handshake · San Francisco, CAPrepare for this interview
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About the role
As Finance Manager, reporting to the Senior Director, Finance, you will serve as a strategic finance partner to our R&D and COGS leaders, ensuring our financial models, forecasts, and reporting infrastructure scale with Handshake's rapid growth across Careers and Handshake AI. This is a high-visibility role partnering directly with executives to shape investment decisions, improve forecast accuracy, and drive financial rigor across the business. Your work will directly influence how we allocate capital, manage margins, and plan for long-term growth.
Responsibilities
- Own Finance business partnering for R&D and COGS to deliver accurate forecasts and actionable insights that inform executive decision-making
- Lead COGS forecasting and classification (above-the-line vs. below-the-line, production vs. non-production) to ensure accurate gross margin and P&L representation
- Design a traceable cost allocation methodology between Careers and Handshake AI to drive transparent margin reporting and scalable financial controls
- Partner with BizOps, Accounting to improve internal processes and ensure sound investment decisions
- You Have
- 4+ years of FP&A, strategic finance, corporate finance, or related experience in a SaaS environment
- Strong Excel modeling skills, including financial statement and variance analysis
- Advanced 3-statement and subscription modeling expertise in Excel
- Deep understanding of SaaS KPIs, gross margin dynamics, and GAAP accounting principles
- Direct experience owning or forecasting COGS and R&D spend
- Familiarity with cloud infrastructure costs (e.g. GCP/AWS) and AI-driven cost structures
- Track record of improving forecast accuracy and building scalable financial processes
- Comfortable partnering directly with business leaders and translating complex data into clear recommendations
- Strong communication skills with the ability to translate complex models into clear business insights
- Excitement about building financial infrastructure in a fast-scaling, AI-driven company
- Bonus Points
- Experience with Salesforce, NetSuite, Adaptive, or similar systems
- Familiarity with cloud infrastructure costs (e.g., GCP/AWS) or AI-driven cost structures
Benefits
Additional Information
About Handshake Handshake was founded on a simple belief that everyone deserves a path to a great career, regardless of where they went to school or who they know. Today, we power 25 million job seekers, 1 million+ employers, and 1,600 educational institutions. In 2025, we started Handshake AI and built the fastest-growing AI data business in history. We work directly with frontier AI lab researchers to create evaluations, publish benchmarks, and push the boundary of data. We've grown from $0 to ~$1B run rate and pay ~$60M to over 30K individuals every month. 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
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