AI Model Policy Trainer, Mental Health (Seattle)
Handshake · Seattle, United States · 29d ago
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.
Handshake AI works directly with frontier AI lab researchers to create evaluations, publish benchmarks, and improve AI models through human expertise.
Role Details
Location: Onsite in Seattle, WA, Monday-Friday.
Compensation: $45-$65/hr. Placement within the range depends on experience.
Employer: TCWGlobal. This is a W-2 assignment supporting Handshake AI.
Employment: Full time, 40 hours per week, non-exempt and eligible for overtime pay.
Schedule: Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m. PT.
About the Role
As an AI Model Policy Trainer focused on mental health, you will help evaluate how conversational AI systems respond to people discussing emotional distress, mental-health conditions, unusual beliefs, possible crises, and other sensitive experiences.
You will review conversations and model behavior against a detailed mental-health safety policy. Your work will help determine whether an AI response is empathetic, appropriately grounded, and sensitive to risk without reinforcing unsupported or potentially harmful beliefs.
This work requires an understanding of why people turn to AI for conversation, reflection, emotional support, or help during difficult moments. Strong candidates will recognize that AI can be useful and accessible while also understanding risks such as inappropriate validation, missed signs of crisis, overreliance, misleading guidance, or reinforcement of harmful beliefs.
Direct experience supporting individuals or families through mental-health or behavioral-health challenges is required. This experience may come from clinical care, social work, nursing, crisis support, professional caregiving, certified peer support, family advocacy, care navigation, or another structured human-services setting. AI or technology experience is helpful, but it does not substitute for this domain experience.
What You Will Do
Review user conversations and AI responses involving mental health, emotional distress, crisis, unusual beliefs, paranoia, hallucinations, mania, and related experiences
Apply detailed policy taxonomies and evaluation criteria to classify user requests and model behavior; evaluate individual messages and changes across longer conversations
Distinguish between validating a person’s emotions and validating an unsupported or potentially harmful explanation; assess whether responses reinforce or escalate harmful beliefs
Evaluate actions taken by AI systems through tools, including searches, messages, scheduling, purchases, file creation, and publication
Write clear rationales that connect each evaluation decision to evidence from the conversation and policy
Participate in calibration exercises and work with other trainers to improve consistency and provide evidence-based peer feedback
Identify ambiguous examples, gaps, and edge cases that may require policy clarification
Collaborate with researchers, policy specialists, operations teams, and other experts; incorporate coaching as policies and model capabilities evolve
Who May Be a Good Fit
Qualified candidates must have direct experience in one or more of the following areas:
Mental health or behavioral health
Social work or community-based services
Nursing or patient care
Professional caregiving
Certified peer support
Family advocacy or care navigation
Crisis support or related human services
Clinical licensure is valuable but is not required. Relevant professional caregiving, advocacy, certified peer-support, or other structured human-services experience may qualify. Interest or experience in AI is helpful, but it does not replace direct experience supporting people through mental-health or behavioral-health challenges.
Desired Capabilities
Required: direct experience supporting individuals or families through mental-health or behavioral-health challenges
Familiarity with conversational AI tools and an interest in how people use them for emotional support and a balanced understanding of their benefits and risks
Ability to interpret sensitive conversations with empathy, precision, and cultural awareness
Ability to follow detailed policies and distinguish between closely related categories
Strong written communication and the ability to explain decisions using specific evidence
Sound judgment when information is incomplete, ambiguous, or context-dependent
Openness to feedback, calibration, and evolving guidance, with constructive discussion of policy disagreements
Strong professional boundaries and comfort working independently with sensitive material
Extra Credit
Experience with structured review, case documentation, assessment, triage, quality assurance, or rubric-based evaluation
Experience working with people experiencing crisis, psychosis, paranoia, mania, hallucinations, suicidal ideation, or severe emotional distress
Experience as a certified peer specialist, family advocate, patient advocate, case manager, crisis counselor, social worker, nurse, caregiver, or behavioral-health professional
Familiarity with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or other conversational AI systems
Experience evaluating AI outputs, annotating data, applying content policies, or conducting quality reviews
Understanding of how culture, language, disability, socioeconomic circumstances, and access to care can affect mental-health conversations
Experience participating in case consultation, supervision, audit, or calibration processes
You Will Thrive Here If
You are curious about why people turn to AI for immediate, private, accessible emotional support
You can acknowledge the potential value of AI without overlooking its limitations or risks
You avoid diagnosing people from limited text and do not treat every mention of mental health as an emergency
You can separate empathy for a person from agreement with their interpretation of an experience
You rely on evidence and policy criteria rather than intuition alone
You can change your conclusion when new context or stronger evidence becomes available
You are comfortable discussing policy disagreements respectfully and applying the final guidance consistently
You care about building AI systems that respond to vulnerable people with greater safety, nuance, and humanity
Location Requirement
This position is based in Seattle, Washington. Candidates must currently be located in the Seattle area or be willing to relocate to Seattle for the position.
Content Warning
This role involves regular and deliberate exposure to sensitive and potentially distressing material. You may review content involving suicide, self-harm, psychosis, paranoia, hallucinations, mania, abuse, violence, substance use, severe emotional distress, and other mental-health or crisis-related situations.
Candidates must be able to engage with this material professionally and sustainably. Support resources are available.
Benefits
Benefits are provided through TCWGlobal. Eligible employees can enroll in medical coverage, including prescription and mental health benefits, dental and vision insurance, healthcare and dependent care flexible spending accounts, and pretax commuter benefits. A 401(k) retirement plan with an employer match is available to eligible participants.
Additional offerings include voluntary accident, critical illness, and term life insurance, wellness and pet-related reimbursements, charitable matching, and employee discounts. Eligibility requirements, waiting periods, employee contributions, and plan terms apply.
Full-time employees scheduled for at least 30 hours per week are eligible for health coverage beginning the first of the month following at least 30 days of employment. Retirement plan eligibility follows a separate schedule.
Paid time off: PTO accrues from the first day of the assignment at one hour per 40 hours worked, with no waiting period to use accrued PTO. PTO may be used for vacation, personal days, or illness, subject to policy approval requirements. Accrual is capped at 80 hours per year and balances at 100 hours, unless otherwise required by law. Additional paid sick leave is provided in accordance with applicable Washington and Seattle requirements.
Paid holidays: The holiday policy lists 13 paid holidays. Eligible employees receive eight hours of holiday pay at their base hourly rate for observed holidays that fall on a scheduled workday, subject to the holiday policy.
See the TCWGlobal 2026 Benefits Guide for coverage options, costs, and enrollment details.
Interview Process
The process includes application review, a recruiter screen, a hiring manager screen, onsite interviews, and a final round before the offer stage. Your recruiter will share the next steps as you move through the process.
Equal Opportunity and Accommodations
TCWGlobal is an equal opportunity employer. Hiring decisions are based on qualifications and abilities, without discrimination based on characteristics protected by applicable law.
Reasonable accommodations are available during the application and interview process. If you need an accommodation, please let your recruiter know.