Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Computer)

Perplexity; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 220,000 - 405,000; Full time

Job summary

Perplexity is seeking engineers to join our highly leveraged engineering team to design and build new products that push the boundaries of AI-assisted knowledge work. You will ship fast and work across product, infrastructure and frontier level advancements in technology.

As an engineer, you will design, build, and own product and platform systems for Computer, lead end-to-end features, and collaborate with product managers, designers, data scientists, and go-to-market teams to deliver impactful

Qualifications

• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Strong experience in at least one major programming language (Python, Go, TypeScript, JavaScript, Kotlin, Swift, Rust, Java, or C++).
• Experience building and operating production systems at meaningful scale.
• Strong product judgment and ability to translate user problems into simple technical solutions.
• Genuine interest in AI products and ability to learn quickly.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and own product and platform systems for Computer
• Lead features, projects and products end-to-end, from problem definition to technical design, implementation, and launch.
• Hill climb on hard problems, iterating to improve for customers.
• Partner closely with engineers, product managers, designers, data scientists, and go-to-market teams.
• Build systems that take into account the nuances of AI, working with agents, context, evaluation, personalization and the ground truth.

Skills

Software engineering

Product judgment

AI interest

Team collaboration

Tools

Python

Go

TypeScript

JavaScript

Kotlin

Swift

Rust

Java

C++

Job description

By applying to this role, you will be considered for engineering roles across all teams at Perplexity.

We are hiring builders to join our highly leveraged engineering team for creating new products that innovate and accelerate human productivity

In 2026, we launched Computer, the defining product for the new era of agentic AI. We’ve scaled beyond the millions of people using Perplexity every day for research, shopping, investing and curiosity into a new paradigm of using AI to transform knowledge into action.

As an engineer at Perplexity, your role will be to build products and systems that define how AI empowers humans to think, decide and act. You’ll ship fast and work between product, infrastructure and frontier level advancements in technology.

Why Perplexity is Different

• Craftsmanship. We build high quality, tasteful products targeting both the AI native and AI curious.
• Ownership. You identify the problem, design the solution and ship it.
• Entrepreneurship. We think like founders, act with urgency, and hustle to deliver for each other and our users.
• Scholarship. Work among highly talented peers, pursuing knowledge and truth, upleveling ourselves, our teams, and our products.
• Partnership. We amplify each others’ strengths, break down silos, and give selflessly to help our colleagues deliver excellence.

What you'll do

• Design, build, and own product and platform systems for Computer
• Lead features, projects and products end-to-end, from problem definition to technical design, implementation, and launch.
• Hill climb on hard problems, continuously iterating to improve for ourselves and customers.
• Partner closely with engineers, product managers, designers, data scientists, and go-to-market teams.
• Build systems that take into account the nuances of AI, working with agents, context, evaluation, personalization and the ground truth.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Strong experience in at least one general-purpose programming language such as Python, Go, TypeScript, JavaScript, Kotlin, Swift, Rust, Java, or C++.
• Experience building and operating production systems at a meaningful scale.
• Strong product judgment and the ability to translate user problems into simple, effective technical solutions.
• Genuine interest and adoption of AI products and willingness to learn quickly.

Nice to have

• Experience with LLMs, agents, retrieval systems, personalization, or evaluation frameworks.
• Time spent at a fast-growing startup or on a high-ownership engineering team.
• Founded a company or initiative.

Our Mission

Perplexity's mission is to power curiosity. Curious people are the people who drive change in the world. Driving change is a continuous cycle of learning, building, and integrating.

Learn: curious people constantly learn new things by asking more. They question the status quo in their own expertise and they constantly learn outside of it. Research is essential to them and never ending.

Build: curious people make and create things, to show the world their new answers to problems no one else ever questioned. They take action on what they’ve learned. Makers need tools to create their products, their companies, their reality.

Integrate: they must interact with the world as it is to drive change and adoption. True leaders do not simply build something and hope. They must have armies of agents and workers who can constantly work in millions of small ways.

Repeat. For curious people this is a cycle that never ends.

Compensation Range: $220K - $405K