Staff Software Engineer, AI Agents & Systems

United States Digital Space LLC; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Perplexity is seeking a software engineer to evolve the core agent harness powering its flagship answer experience. You will blend product judgment with single- and multi-agent engineering to build the world’s foremost agent for knowledge accumulation and answers.

You will translate user needs and insights into improvements to orchestration, context management, performance, and reliability, ensuring observability and a strong developer experience for scalable, fault-tolerant systems.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of experience building and shipping large-scale AI systems and services with high reliability, availability, and performance.
• Strong software engineering craft with focus on developer experience and future-proof systems.
• Proficiency with Python; Rust and cloud infra (AWS, Kubernetes) are a plus.
• BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, or related fields (or equivalent experience).

Responsibilities

• Evolve the core agent harness that powers our flagship answer experience.
• Translate user needs and quantitative insights into improvements to the agent’s orchestration, context management, performance, and reliability.
• Contribute to observability, evaluation, and developer experience to enable reliable agents at global scale.

Skills

Python

Rust

Cloud infrastructure

Education

BS/MS/PhD in CS/Engineering

Tools

AWS

Kubernetes

Job description

Perplexity is seeking a software engineer to evolve the core agent harness powering its flagship answer experience. You will blend product judgment with single- and multi-agent engineering to build the world’s foremost agent for knowledge accumulation and answers.

You will translate user needs and insights into improvements to orchestration, context management, performance, and reliability, ensuring observability and a strong developer experience for scalable, fault-tolerant systems.