Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Security)

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

Job summary

Perplexity in San Francisco seeks a hands-on Software Engineer to build security tools, AI-driven agents, and automation that strengthen detection, response, and vulnerability management. You’ll design production services and internal tools, collaborating with cross-functional teams to raise the security posture of our products and infrastructure.

You will implement and operate security pipelines, integrate signals from cloud, endpoints, SaaS, and applications, and contribute to

Qualifications

• 4+ years building security-related tools or in security engineering with software responsibilities.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain software and automation to improve detection and response, including alert enrichment, triage workflows, and investigation tooling.

Skills

Python

Go

TypeScript

Security tooling

Automation

Tools

Logging pipelines

SIEMs

EDR

Cloud APIs

Identity platforms

Job description

About The Role

Perplexity is seeking a hands-on Software Engineer to build and evolve the software, automations, and systems that power our security operations. This role focuses on engineering security tools and internal AI-driven agents that improve detection and response, vulnerability management, and the overall security posture of our products and infrastructure.

About The Role

Perplexity is seeking a hands-on Software Engineer to build and evolve the software, automations, and systems that power our security operations. This role focuses on engineering security tools and internal AI-driven agents that improve detection and response, vulnerability management, and the overall security posture of our products and infrastructure.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain software and automation that improves our detection and response program, including alert enrichment, triage workflows, and investigation tooling.
• Implement and enhance internal AI agents and security bots that assist with monitoring, investigations, reporting, and other security operation tasks.
• Develop and operate systems and workflows that support the bug bounty and vulnerability disclosure program, including intake, triage, prioritization, and remediation tracking.
• Partner with product and engineering teams to threat model new features and systems, propose mitigations, and add guardrails into designs and implementations.
• Contribute to secure-by-default libraries, services, and patterns that make it easy for teams to build secure features.
• Integrate security signals from cloud, endpoints, SaaS, and applications into cohesive pipelines and data models that support detection and analysis.
• Build automation to reduce manual work in incident response, containment, and remediation.
• Collaborate with security engineers and other software engineers to review designs and code, and to continuously improve our security tooling and platforms.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience as a software engineer with significant time spent building security-related tools, platforms, or automations, or in a security engineering role with strong software development responsibilities.
• Proficiency in at least one major programming language (such as Python, Go, or TypeScript) and experience building production services, CLIs, or internal tools.
• Experience integrating with security-relevant systems such as logging pipelines, SIEMs, EDR, cloud APIs, or identity platforms.
• Practical experience with threat modeling, secure design, or application security reviews for services or features.
• Experience operating or contributing to bug bounty or vulnerability management programs is a plus.
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred) and modern SaaS environments.
• Ability to work closely with cross-functional teams, own projects end-to-end, and ship pragmatic, high-impact improvements.
• Bonus: Experience designing or improving AI-powered agents or automation used for security operations.

Compensation Range: $220K - $405K