Staff Engineer, Model Behavior & Prompt Design

Kindredventures; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Perplexity is seeking software engineers for the Model Behavior team to shape how our AI products respond, including style, tool usage, and memory across domains and models.

You will design prompts, contexts, and evaluation methods, working closely with teams to improve prompt design, tool use, and memory handling. Collaboration across stakeholders is essential, with a focus on experimentation and rigorous analysis.

Qualifications

• 2 to 10+ years of experience in software engineering or research.
• Strong background in software engineering fundamentals and a technical understanding of LLM-driven and agentic systems.
• Experience shaping LLM behavior through prompts, tool and skill design, or memory systems.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, particularly in explaining complex concepts to diverse stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Context engineering: design, test, and optimize prompts, skills, tools, and memory across products.
• Model releases: help experiment with and release new models.
• Research & analysis: identify inconsistencies and failure modes in model outputs through rigorous research.
• Knowledge sharing: help engineers build intuition for prompt design and context engineering best practices.
• Staying current: track latest prompting and alignment techniques from industry and academia.

Skills

Software engineering

LLM systems

Prompt design

Memory systems

Communication

Job description

Perplexity is seeking software engineers for the Model Behavior team to shape how our AI products respond, including style, tool usage, and memory across domains and models.

You will design prompts, contexts, and evaluation methods, working closely with teams to improve prompt design, tool use, and memory handling. Collaboration across stakeholders is essential, with a focus on experimentation and rigorous analysis.