Senior UX Researcher, Taxonomy

About this role

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

About Handshake AI

Human data is the core infrastructure to AI advancement. Frontier AI labs currently improve model capabilities with various data-intensive post-training techniques. We believe that data spend for AI training will increase by 3-5x in the next few years and continue for much longer as models take on new domains. Handshake AI supports all of the frontier AI labs, working on their most complex data at the largest scale.

Handshake AI is rapidly building a new generation of human data products—from expert annotation platforms to AI interviewers and seamless payout infrastructure—all designed to accelerate research and improve model performance. We power career platforms at 92% of the top U.S. universities, giving us direct access to verified expert talent across a wide range of domains.

The Role

We're hiring a Senior UX Researcher, Taxonomy to research how professionals across industries actually do their jobs, and turn that understanding into structured taxonomies that shape how frontier AI models are trained and evaluated. This work directly informs how the largest AI labs in the world invest in professional agent development. You'll also partner closely with our Reinforcement Learning Environments team, blending taxonomy research with traditional UXR to co-develop model training techniques.

Responsibilities

- Taxonomy Development: Design, build, and continuously refine a scalable taxonomy of jobs, sub-domains, distinct user tasks, tools, and data used across various job roles.

- Mixed-Methods Research: Plan and execute both qualitative (interviews, observational studies) and quantitative (surveys, behavioral data analysis) user research to inform and validate the taxonomy.

- AI-Moderated Research at Scale: Leverage AI-moderated user research tools to conduct, synthesize, and extract qualitative insights from large user cohorts efficiently.

- Task Prioritization & Ranking: Apply basic statistical methods (e.g., MaxDiff, forced ranking, opportunity scoring, weighting, and imputation) to evaluate, rank, and prioritize tasks based on user importance, frequency, and current pain points.

- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with Product, Design, AI Research, Operations and Engineering to ensure the job and task taxonomy directly informs product strategy and feature development.

- Insight Synthesis: Translate complex, multi-layered research data into clear, actionable frameworks, user models, and documentation.

You Have

- Experience: 5+ years of experience in UX Research, Information Architecture, Taxonomy, Applied Economics, Human Computer Interaction or a closely related field focusing on user behavior.

- Research Expertise: Proven ability to independently design and run rigorous qualitative and quantitative research studies.

- Taxonomy & Frameworks: Strong understanding of classification systems, hierarchical modeling, and frameworks like Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD). Previous experience building taxonomies specifically for B2B software, HR tech, or professional tooling.

- Statistical Literacy and Survey Science: Solid understanding of foundational statistics necessary for quantitative user research. You should be comfortable designing surveys and analyzing data to objectively rank and prioritize user tasks.

- Tech-Forward Approach: Experience with, or a strong willingness to master, AI-moderated user research platforms to scale qualitative data collection.

- Communication: Exceptional analytical and communication skills, with the ability to present complex architectural concepts to stakeholders simply and effectively.

Nice to Have

- Familiarity with advanced prioritization frameworks or willingness to develop your own framework.

- Experience with advanced scripting techniques used for data analysis.

- Bayesian statistics

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 http://joinhandshake.com/careers. http://joinhandshake.com/careers.Your

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