Engineering Manager, API Platform & Frontier AI

Perplexity; California (MO); On-site; USD 170,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Perplexity is seeking a strong technical leader to steer the API Platform engineering team through a rapid period of growth. You will design, implement, and scale APIs that empower developers and agents, while prioritizing reliability and developer experience.

You will guide an experienced team, own technical strategy for scalable APIs, and mentor engineers to grow talent. This role targets senior engineers with leadership experience and a passion for frontier AI capabilities.

Qualifications

• Entrepreneurial mindset with willingness to lead beyond engineering.
• Proficiency in Python; knowledge of Go or Rust is a plus.
• Extensive experience designing high-traffic APIs with scalable patterns.
• 8+ years engineering experience, including at least 3 years as a manager.
• Strong customer empathy, product sense, and documentation focus.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical and team leadership across multiple layers of our rapidly growing API business.
• Design, build, and operate mission-critical APIs that provide blocks for frontier intelligence.
• Reimagine customer needs of tomorrow while serving today’s workloads.
• Drive product reliability, code quality, AI evaluation, testing, and maintenance.
• Oversee hiring, onboarding, and mentoring; develop interview pipelines with recruiting.
• Collaborate across teams to incorporate frontier capabilities into the API Platform.
• Track progress toward top-line business goals in coordination with executives.

Skills

Entrepreneurial attitude

Python

Go

Rust

API design

AI APIs

Customer empathy

Product sense

Organizational skills

Engineering leadership

Hiring & mentoring

Management experience

Job description

Perplexity is seeking a strong technical leader to steer the API Platform engineering team through a rapid period of growth. You will design, implement, and scale APIs that empower developers and agents, while prioritizing reliability and developer experience.

You will guide an experienced team, own technical strategy for scalable APIs, and mentor engineers to grow talent. This role targets senior engineers with leadership experience and a passion for frontier AI capabilities.