Forward Deployed Engineer, Perplexity Computer

at Perplexity AI

📍 San Francisco, United States

USD 200,000-250,000 per year

SENIOR

✅ On-site

Tech Stack
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.

AI @ 7 Communication @ 6 LLM @ 4 RAG Reporting @ 6 Scoping @ 6

Details

Perplexity is seeking a highly skilled and motivated Forward Deployed Engineer to help customers get the most out of their Perplexity Computer deployments. This customer-embedded role is focused on scoping high-leverage use cases and shipping working solutions quickly for Fortune 500 enterprises, consulting firms, and finance and legal organizations.

Perplexity Computer is an AI system that navigates tools, interacts with applications, and completes multi-step enterprise workflows end-to-end. The role combines software engineering, solutions architecture, and technical program management. It is hands-on-keyboard and outcome-oriented, rather than a traditional Solutions Engineer, Customer Success, or generalist implementation role.

Responsibilities

Embed with strategic customers on time-boxed engagements, typically lasting 1–3 months.
Run engagements as projects with clear scope, milestones, and exit criteria.
Design and build workflows with support from engineering as needed.
Prototype, ship, debug, and harden solutions in customer environments using Perplexity Computer and adjacent tooling.
Own customer relationships throughout engagements, including executive sponsor communications, practitioner working sessions, expectation management, and deployment risk management.
Turn customer engagements into reusable skills, connectors, workflow templates, or reference implementations.
Partner with Sales and Customer Success on scoping, pre-sales technical validation, and expansion.
Serve as the technical voice for high-value opportunities.

Requirements

5+ years of experience in a customer-embedded technical role, such as forward-deployed engineering, senior solutions engineering, solutions architecture, or technical consulting at a strong services organization.
Proven ability to run customer engagements as projects, including scoping, milestone planning, status reporting, executive communications, risk management, and exit criteria.
Daily use of frontier large language models, AI agents, and coding assistants, with strong intuition for their capabilities and limitations.
Executive-credible communication skills, including the ability to explain architecture to CIOs while managing programs on the ground.
High agency and comfort working with ambiguity, incomplete requirements, and limited process.

Nice to Have

Prior experience in forward-deployed engineering, applied AI, or deployment strategy at a frontier AI company.
Sales engineering leadership at an enterprise SaaS or infrastructure company, with ownership of the technical outcome of $1M+ deals.
Experience as a Solutions Architect in a strong services organization.
Experience deploying agents, retrieval-augmented generation systems, or multi-step LLM workflows in regulated or complex enterprise environments.
Experience working at startups or small teams and owning customer projects end-to-end.

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.