Member of Technical Staff (Model Behavior)
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 @ 3
Agentic Systems @ 6
Communication @ 6
LLM @ 6
Prompt Engineering @ 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
We're hiring software engineers for the Model Behavior team to help shape how Perplexity's AI products behave, including the style of their responses and the way they use tools, skills, and memory. The team designs prompt and context engineering strategies to deliver high-quality user experiences across multiple domains and models.
The ideal candidate has a strong software engineering background and an analytical, experiment-driven approach to solving challenging problems. You will work on context and prompt engineering to shape model behavior and style, and to guide how models use tools, skills, and memory across products.
Responsibilities
- Context Engineering: Design, test, and optimize the prompts, skills, tools, and memory that shape Perplexity responses across products, features, and use cases. Build self-improvement loops to steer prompts, improve tool and skill use, and improve the ability to draw on memory.
- Model Releases: Help experiment with and release new models.
- Research and Analysis: Identify inconsistencies and failure modes in model outputs through well-designed research projects for internal and production systems.
- Knowledge Sharing: Help engineers across teams build intuition for prompt design and context engineering best practices.
- Staying Current: Track the latest prompting, context engineering, and alignment techniques from industry and academia, and bring the best ideas back to the team.
Requirements
Required
- 2 to 10+ years of experience in software engineering or research.
- Strong software engineering fundamentals and a technical understanding of LLM-driven and agentic systems.
- Experience shaping LLM behavior through prompts, tool and skill design, or memory systems.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, particularly when explaining complex concepts to diverse stakeholders.
Nice to Have
- Recent experience working on modern LLM-driven products.
- Experience working across teams or with external partners.
- Experience designing evaluations or benchmarks for AI systems.
Benefits
Full-time U.S. employees receive a comprehensive benefits program including equity, health, dental, vision, retirement, fitness, commuter and dependent care accounts, and more. International employees receive a comprehensive benefits program tailored to their region of residence. USD salary ranges apply only to U.S.-based positions. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including experience and expertise, and may vary from the listed amounts.