Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Monetization)

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

Job summary

Perplexity is seeking a Monetization Engineer in San Francisco to design and manage their billing platform. The role involves leading the billing and monetization systems that support their products, optimizing for reliability and user experience. Candidates should have at least 4 years of software engineering experience, strong skills in Python, and familiarity with billing systems like Stripe. Competitive compensation ranges from $220K to $405K. Join us to help transform AI into accessible products.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Experience building or scaling billing, payments, subscription, or monetization systems.
• Strong backend engineering skills and complex distributed systems reasoning.
• Proven track record of shipping features ahead of schedule.

Responsibilities

• Own the design and development of the billing platform and monetization systems.
• Implement and launch billing API abstractions for product teams.
• Build and operate the subscription and usage-based billing systems.
• Ensure reliability with proactive monitoring and alerting.

Skills

Software engineering

Billing systems

Backend development in Python

Database management with PostgreSQL

Cross-functional collaboration

Stripe API experience

Tools

Stripe

PostgreSQL

Docker

AWS

Job description

Perplexity is AI for people who expect more.

In 2026, we launched Computer, the defining product for the new era of agentic AI. Millions of people now use Perplexity to transform knowledge into action, and every action an agent takes is metered, budgeted, and settled through the billing platform this role owns.

As a monetization engineer at Perplexity, you'll own the abstractions that let product teams ship new SKUs, run pricing experiments, and convert users into paying customers, without needing to understand billing internals. The usage‑based billing system this team owns is foundational to Perplexity Computer and our agentic products: metering every agent action in real time, enforcing credit budgets, and settling costs across entirely new interaction models. You'll work across subscriptions, usage‑based billing, and enterprise contracts to ensure every revenue path is reliable, observable, and easy to extend.

Tech Stack

Python | Go | Stripe | PostgreSQL | AWS | Docker

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 the billing platform and monetization systems that power Computer and every paid experience across Perplexity.
• Lead features end‑to‑end, from problem definition through technical design, implementation, and launch, including the billing API abstractions that let product teams ship new SKUs, pricing models, and monetization experiments with minimal friction.
• Build and operate the subscription, invoicing, and usage‑based billing systems that serve millions of users across consumer and enterprise plans.
• Hill‑climb on reliability: tiered SLOs organized by customer impact, proactive monitoring, and alerting to catch revenue‑affecting issues before customers do.
• Partner closely with Finance, Data Science, Growth, Security, Support, and go‑to‑market teams to keep billing data accurate, auditable, and compliant, and to expand payment method coverage and optimize authorization rates globally.
• Build internal tooling that empowers Support and Finance to diagnose and resolve billing issues quickly.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Direct experience building or scaling billing, payments, subscription, or monetization systems.
• Deep familiarity with payment processors (Stripe, Square, etc.), including subscriptions, invoicing, disputes, refunds, and webhooks.
• Demonstrated experience and appetite for building in‑house billing solutions that rival leading best‑in‑class buy options.
• Strong backend engineering skills in Python with the ability to reason about complex distributed systems.
• Experience with relational databases (PostgreSQL) and making data‑informed decisions to prioritize work.
• Strong product judgment, you translate user and stakeholder problems into simple, effective technical solutions.
• Self‑motivated with strong ownership instincts, you ship major features ahead of schedule and drive improvements without asking for permission.
• Track record of cross‑functional collaboration with Finance, Support, or Growth stakeholders.
• Genuine interest and adoption of AI products and willingness to learn quickly.

Nice to have

• 2+ years of hands‑on experience with the Stripe APIs and SDKs.
• Experience with usage‑based or metered billing models, especially metering agent actions, tokens, or other non‑traditional units.
• Experience with Apple and Google Play in‑app purchase billing.
• Familiarity with growth experimentation and PLG/self‑serve SaaS monetization.
• Experience building platform constructs that support pricing experiments and A/B testing.
• Full‑stack experience (our frontend is Next.js/React/TypeScript).
• Experience in a regulatory or compliance‑heavy billing environment.
• Time spent at a fast‑growing startup or on a high‑ownership engineering team.

Compensation Range

$220K - $405K