Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Computer)

at Perplexity AI

📍 New York City, United States
📍 Palo Alto, United States
📍 San Francisco, United States

USD 220,000-405,000 per year

MIDDLE

✅ 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 @ 3 Agentic AI Go @ 6 Java @ 6 JavaScript @ 6 LLM Python @ 6 Rust @ 6 Swift @ 6 TypeScript @ 6

Details

By applying to this role, you will be considered for engineering roles across all teams at Perplexity.

Perplexity is hiring builders to join its highly leveraged engineering team to create new products that innovate and accelerate human productivity. In 2026, Perplexity launched Computer, a product for the new era of agentic AI. The team is building products and systems that define how AI empowers people to think, decide, and act.

Engineers ship quickly and work across product, infrastructure, and frontier technology advancements.

Why Perplexity Is Different

Craftsmanship: Build high-quality, tasteful products for both AI-native and AI-curious users.
Ownership: Identify problems, design solutions, and ship them.
Entrepreneurship: Think like founders, act with urgency, and deliver for colleagues and users.
Scholarship: Work with talented peers while pursuing knowledge and continuously improving teams and products.
Partnership: Collaborate across teams and help colleagues deliver excellent work.

Responsibilities

Design, build, and own product and platform systems for Computer.
Lead features, projects, and products end-to-end, from problem definition through technical design, implementation, and launch.
Continuously iterate to improve products and customer outcomes while solving challenging technical problems.
Partner closely with engineers, product managers, designers, data scientists, and go-to-market teams.
Build systems that account for the nuances of AI, including agents, context, evaluation, personalization, and ground truth.

Requirements

4+ years of professional software engineering experience.
Strong experience in at least one general-purpose programming language, such as Python, Go, TypeScript, JavaScript, Swift, Rust, Java, or C++.
Experience building and operating production systems at meaningful scale.
Strong product judgment and the ability to translate user problems into simple, effective technical solutions.
Genuine interest in and adoption of AI products, along with a willingness to learn quickly.

Nice to Have

Experience with large language models, agents, retrieval systems, personalization, or evaluation frameworks.
Experience at a fast-growing startup or on a high-ownership engineering team.
Experience founding a company or initiative.

Mission

Perplexity's mission is to power curiosity. The company describes curiosity as a continuous cycle of learning, building, integrating, and repeating: learning through research and questioning, building solutions and products, and integrating them into the world to drive change and adoption.

Benefits

Full-time U.S. employees receive benefits including equity, health, dental, vision, retirement, fitness, commuter and dependent care accounts, and more. International employees receive benefits tailored to their region of residence. USD salary ranges apply only to U.S.-based positions, and final offers vary based on factors including experience and expertise.