Senior Program Lead, Fellow Experience

📋 Description

• • As the Senior Program Lead, Fellow Experience at Handshake, you will be instrumental in shaping and executing a critical program designed to support advanced AI research and data initiatives for a flagship customer.
• • This senior individual contributor role is at the forefront of our AI economy initiatives, focusing on a dedicated Fellow program for one of Handshake AI’s top frontier lab customers.
• • You will own the complete lifecycle of this program, from its initial design and launch through its ongoing operation and continuous improvement, ensuring a seamless and impactful experience for all participants.
• • Your primary responsibility will be to establish and maintain the structure, systems, and execution of this high-impact, cohort-based program, working in close partnership with our Operations/Delivery team.
• • This role is ideal for a proactive and detail-oriented individual who thrives in the dynamic environment of a rapidly growing startup, bringing a high bar for rigor, consistency, and professionalism to every aspect of the program.
• • You will be tasked with bringing clarity, structure, and repeatability to a complex, customer-specific program, fostering strong collaboration across internal teams including Operations/Delivery, Support, Product, and Learning & Training.
• • As the inaugural dedicated Program Lead for Fellow Experience, you will play a foundational role in defining best practices for designing, running, and scaling customer-specific programs within Handshake AI.
• • This position demands strong judgment, executive presence, and the strategic ability to balance immediate delivery needs for a demanding customer with the long-term vision of building robust, scalable systems.
• • Program Design & Execution:
• • Design, launch, and meticulously operate a cohort-based Fellow program tailored specifically for a single frontier AI lab customer.
• • Collaborate closely with Delivery pods to strike an optimal balance between critical delivery requirements, ensuring high Fellow retention rates, and maintaining peak operational efficiency.
• • Take full ownership of the program's structure, defining clear timelines, developing effective onboarding models, and establishing robust communication standards for each customer cohort.
• • Translate often ambiguous customer needs and internal objectives into concrete, actionable program plans and establish clear operating cadences, working in tandem with Strategic Project Leads.
• • Fellow Experience & Retention:
• • Own the entire end-to-end Fellow experience for this specific customer program, encompassing everything from initial onboarding to successful program completion and sustained post-program engagement.
• • Drive tangible, measurable improvements in key metrics such as Fellow retention, overall engagement levels, participant satisfaction, and program completion rates for the customer program.
• • Proactively identify recurring friction points that may hinder Fellow performance, impact morale, or compromise delivery quality, and subsequently implement durable, scalable solutions to address these challenges.
• • Operational Excellence, Scalable Systems & Automation:
• • Develop and refine comprehensive playbooks, efficient workflows, and lightweight yet effective systems that ensure consistency in current operations and lay the groundwork for future scalability.
• • Actively seek out and implement opportunities to leverage automation, internal tooling, and AI-powered workflows to significantly reduce manual effort, enhance overall quality, and bolster program reliability.
• • Aim to reduce program-level escalations by implementing stronger structural frameworks, fostering clearer communication channels, and driving system-level improvements.
• • Cross-Functional Leadership & Influence:
• • Forge strong partnerships with Delivery Leads, Product Managers, Learning specialists, and other key teams dedicated to supporting the frontier AI lab customer.
• • Serve as a primary, trusted point of contact for program-level issues concerning this customer that may span multiple teams or functional areas.
• • Effectively represent the critical perspective of the Fellow Experience in customer-specific planning sessions, risk assessment discussions, and escalation management processes.