Engineering Manager (API Platform)
USD 300,000-405,000 per year
Used Tools & Technologies
Not specified
Required Skills & Competences
Tag name is followed by "@" symbol and proficiency level value.
About proficiency levels:
- 1-2 — basic awareness. Minimal hands-on experience, and a rudimentary understanding of the technology's purpose;
- 3-6 — daily use. Comfortable and regular usage, capable of handling common tasks and challenges related to the technology;
- 7-9 — you are an expert, you can teach others, you know all the pitfalls and tricks;
- 10 — exceptional knowledge, comprehensive understanding, and adeptness in all aspects of the technology, including advanced problem-solving. Think twice before claiming or demanding such level.
Go @ 1
Python @ 1
Distributed Systems @ 3
Hiring @ 3
Leadership @ 3
Prioritization @ 6
Performance Optimization @ 3
Rust @ 1
API @ 3
AI @ 3
- 1-2 — basic awareness. Minimal hands-on experience, and a rudimentary understanding of the technology's purpose;
- 3-6 — daily use. Comfortable and regular usage, capable of handling common tasks and challenges related to the technology;
- 7-9 — you are an expert, you can teach others, you know all the pitfalls and tricks;
- 10 — exceptional knowledge, comprehensive understanding, and adeptness in all aspects of the technology, including advanced problem-solving. Think twice before claiming or demanding such level.
Details
Perplexity innovates at the frontier of AI infrastructure, search, and orchestration. The Perplexity API Platform delivers programmatic access to those building blocks — from exabyte-scale knowledge indexes to codegen-first agent runtimes — exposing them as mission-critical APIs used by startups, enterprises, and government customers.
Responsibilities
- Provide both technical and team leadership across multiple layers of the rapidly growing API business.
- Design, build, and operate mission-critical APIs that provide customers building blocks for frontier intelligence.
- Prioritize great developer and agent experience (ergonomic, well-documented, easy-to-adopt APIs).
- Reimagine future customer needs and corresponding architectures while serving current customer workloads.
- Drive product reliability, code quality, AI evaluation, testing, and maintenance for the broader team.
- Oversee hiring, onboarding, mentorship, and develop rigorous interview pipelines in partnership with recruiting.
- Collaborate across teams to incorporate frontier capabilities into the API Platform and improve existing capabilities for customers.
- Track and ensure progress toward top-line business goals in close coordination with engineering and business executives.
Requirements
- 8+ years of engineering experience, with at least 3 years as an engineering manager.
- Entrepreneurial attitude; able and eager to run more than just engineering.
- Proficiency in Python (bonus points for Go and/or Rust).
- Strong understanding of high-traffic API design, including schema evolution & versioning, idempotency, authentication patterns, rate limiting, and performance tuning.
- Experience with distributed systems, performance optimization, and agent orchestration.
- Experience with modern AI APIs (latency tuning, streaming, model orchestration, and emerging technical standards) is a strong plus.
- Strong customer empathy and product sense to build ergonomic APIs.
- Strong organizational skills for managing parallel technical projects and guiding teams in prioritization and tradeoffs.
- Experience managing engineering teams, including recruiting, growing, and retaining talent.
Benefits
- Full-time U.S. employees enjoy a comprehensive benefits program including equity, health, dental, vision, retirement, fitness, commuter and dependent care accounts, and more.
- Full-time employees outside the U.S. enjoy a comprehensive benefits program tailored to their region of residence.
- USD salary ranges apply only to U.S.-based positions; international salaries are set by the local market. Final offer amounts depend on experience and expertise.