AI Strategist, Financial Services

Details

Perplexity is an AI-powered answer engine founded in December 2022 and growing rapidly as one of the world's leading AI platforms. The company is building accurate, trustworthy AI that powers decision-making and assistive AI applications.

About the Role

Perplexity is building an AI platform for professional finance, including Perplexity Computer, an agentic platform that navigates tools, completes multi-step workflows, and connects to market data, filings, transcripts, and research, as well as an API Platform for search, retrieval, and automation across structured and unstructured financial data.

The Applied AI / Forward Deployed team works closely with buy-side firms—including hedge funds, private equity firms, and asset managers—to understand investment processes and embed them into bespoke solutions built on the platform. This includes translating screening, diligence, monitoring, and decision-making workflows into custom skills, agents, and connector configurations, while feeding customer learnings back into the product.

This is a commercial and sales engineering role focused on financial services. The AI Strategist owns strategic customer engagements end to end, including discovery, solution definition, demonstrations, deployment, and expansion. The role combines customer ownership, product strategy, and sales engineering, requiring fluency in both investment workflows and AI platforms.

Responsibilities

Own Strategic Financial-Services Engagements

• Lead discovery with banks, private equity firms, hedge funds, and asset managers to understand investment-team priorities and identify workflows worth automating.
• Define scope, success metrics, pilot design, and commercial structure.
• Drive deployment and rollout across front-office teams, with revenue responsibility alongside Sales.

Be the Demo and Technical Proof Engine

• Build and deliver workflow-specific demonstrations covering screening, comparable-company analysis, diligence, earnings analysis, research synthesis, and portfolio monitoring.
• Prototype workflows, skills, and connector configurations hands-on in Perplexity Computer and the API Platform.
• Run pilots and evaluations that meet the scrutiny of analysts and portfolio managers.

Bring Domain Judgment to the Product

• Translate the working practices of deal teams, research desks, and portfolio managers into product, connector, and data-partnership priorities.
• Assess market data, filings, transcripts, and research integrations across finance sub-verticals, and drive the roadmap where gaps exist.
• Codify repeatable engagement patterns, including discovery templates, finance-specific reference workflows, demo libraries, and deployment playbooks.

Operate as the Commercial Lead

• Own senior relationships with investment professionals and technology leaders.
• Move engagements through qualification, scoping, proposal, pricing, legal, and close.
• Create urgency, write concise follow-ups, and determine when to push or wait.

Requirements

• At least 3 years of direct experience in investment banking, private equity, hedge funds, equity research, or institutional asset management, including building models, writing memos, and working with relevant investment workflows.
• At least 6 years of total experience spanning finance and some combination of technical go-to-market, sales engineering, solutions architecture, AI product strategy, or applied AI with customer exposure.
• Deep familiarity with front-office workflows, including screening, comparable-company analysis, diligence, earnings, research synthesis, portfolio construction, and monitoring.
• Strong intuition for AI products, agents, and workflows, with the ability to understand technical systems.
• Ability to work closely with Forward Deployed Engineers and technical teams to scope builds, pair on prototypes, and translate customer requirements into engineering-ready specifications.
• Demonstrated ability to turn ambiguous customer problems into scoped deployment plans with clear success metrics.
• Strong commercial judgment and comfort working with managing directors, partners, portfolio managers, CIOs, and CTOs.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including the ability to write proposals, customer memos, technical scopes, and launch narratives.
• High agency and low ego, with the ability to manage multiple complex customer workstreams and make progress without an established playbook.

Nice-to-Haves

• Hands-on experience building with agentic systems, tool-use workflows, MCP, or LLM APIs.
• Working knowledge of institutional data platforms such as FactSet, Bloomberg, S&P Capital IQ, PitchBook, Morningstar, or similar.
• Experience selling or deploying technology into regulated financial institutions, including security and compliance review.
• Founder or early-startup operating experience.
• A strong network across buy-side and sell-side institutions.

Benefits

Full-time U.S. employees receive benefits including equity, health, dental, vision, retirement, fitness, commuter, and dependent-care accounts. International employees receive benefits tailored to their region of residence.