Engineering Manager, (Multimodal)

Details

In 2026, Perplexity launched Computer, a product for the era of agentic AI. The Multimodal team builds experiences and infrastructure that extend AI interaction beyond touch and text, including realtime voice, vision, and the platform systems behind them.

The team owns the full path from a user speaking into a device to an answer coming back: realtime session infrastructure connecting clients to frontier audio models, backend orchestration that routes, records, and supervises live sessions, and the SDK powering voice and multimodal experiences across Perplexity's apps.

As Engineering Manager for Multimodal, you will lead the team building realtime voice and multimodal experiences across Perplexity. You will hire and develop engineers, set technical direction, and drive new products at the intersection of voice, vision, and agents.

Responsibilities

• Lead the team building realtime voice and multimodal experiences, taking new products from prototype to production launch.
• Own the team's roadmap, determining which voice and vision experiences to build and the infrastructure required to support them.
• Hire and develop engineers, giving them ownership of meaningful technical problems and feedback to grow.
• Shape the architecture behind the full voice experience, from user input through models, tools, and agent responses.
• Lead systems that turn live conversations into action by connecting voice models to tools, agents, and long-running tasks.
• Guide the team through latency, reliability, and scaling challenges for live voice, including session recovery and performance under load.
• Partner with SDK, client, infrastructure, and model teams to bring audio and vision capabilities to Perplexity apps.
• Use user feedback and production performance to improve the experience after launch and determine future investments.

Requirements

• Experience managing engineering teams, including hiring, coaching, and performance management.
• Strong software engineering background in backend or distributed systems.
• Experience designing and operating production services in rapidly scaling environments on AWS or similar cloud infrastructure.
• Track record of leading teams to ship complex projects in a fast-moving environment.
• Strong product judgment and ability to translate user problems into clear technical priorities.
• Clear communication and ability to work effectively across teams.
• Experience with Rust, Python, Go, or similar languages. The team works primarily in Rust and Python.
• Genuine interest in and adoption of AI products, with willingness to learn quickly.

Nice to Have

• Experience with realtime media systems, including voice, audio streaming, WebRTC, or low-latency transport.
• Experience integrating LLMs, speech models, or computer vision into production systems.
• Experience with agent frameworks, tool-calling architectures, or sandboxed execution environments.
• Experience leading projects across backend services, client SDKs, and user-facing applications.
• Experience leading a team at a fast-growing startup or in a high-ownership environment.

Benefits

Full-time U.S. employees receive a comprehensive benefits program including equity, health, dental, vision, retirement, fitness, commuter, and dependent care accounts. International employees receive a benefits program tailored to their region of residence. Final offer amounts may vary based on experience and expertise.