Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Monetization)

Details

In 2026, Perplexity launched Computer, a product for the new era of agentic AI. Millions of people use Perplexity to transform knowledge into action, and every action an agent takes is metered, budgeted, and settled through the billing platform owned by this role.

As a monetization engineer, you will own the abstractions that allow product teams to ship new SKUs, run pricing experiments, and convert users into paying customers without needing to understand billing internals. The usage-based billing system is foundational to Perplexity Computer and its agentic products, metering every agent action in real time, enforcing credit budgets, and settling costs across new interaction models. You will work across subscriptions, usage-based billing, and enterprise contracts to ensure every revenue path is reliable, observable, and easy to extend.

Tech Stack: Python, Go, Stripe, PostgreSQL, AWS, Docker

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 users and colleagues.
• Scholarship: Work with talented peers while pursuing knowledge and improving teams and products.
• Partnership: Amplify colleagues' strengths, break down silos, and help deliver excellence.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and own the billing platform and monetization systems that power Computer and every paid experience across Perplexity.
• Lead features end-to-end, from problem definition through technical design, implementation, and launch.
• Build billing API abstractions that allow product teams to ship new SKUs, pricing models, and monetization experiments with minimal friction.
• Build and operate subscription, invoicing, and usage-based billing systems serving millions of users across consumer and enterprise plans.
• Improve reliability through tiered SLOs organized by customer impact, proactive monitoring, and alerting for revenue-affecting issues.
• Partner with Finance, Data Science, Growth, Security, Support, and go-to-market teams to keep billing data accurate, auditable, and compliant.
• Expand payment method coverage and optimize authorization rates globally.
• Build internal tooling that enables Support and Finance to diagnose and resolve billing issues quickly.

Requirements

• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Direct experience building or scaling billing, payments, subscription, or monetization systems.
• Deep familiarity with payment processors such as Stripe or Square, including subscriptions, invoicing, disputes, refunds, and webhooks.
• Experience building in-house billing solutions comparable to leading commercial options.
• Strong backend engineering skills in Python and the ability to reason about complex distributed systems.
• Experience with relational databases, especially PostgreSQL, and making data-informed decisions to prioritize work.
• Strong product judgment and the ability to translate user and stakeholder problems into simple, effective technical solutions.
• Self-motivation and strong ownership instincts, including the ability to ship major features and drive improvements independently.
• A track record of cross-functional collaboration with Finance, Support, or Growth stakeholders.
• Genuine interest in and adoption of AI products, along with a willingness to learn quickly.

Nice to Have

• 2+ years of hands-on experience with Stripe APIs and SDKs.
• Experience with usage-based or metered billing models, especially metering agent actions, tokens, or other non-traditional units.
• Experience with Apple and Google Play in-app purchase billing.
• Familiarity with growth experimentation and product-led growth or self-serve SaaS monetization.
• Experience building platform constructs that support pricing experiments and A/B testing.
• Full-stack experience with Next.js, React, and TypeScript.
• Experience in a regulatory or compliance-heavy billing environment.
• Experience at a fast-growing startup or on a high-ownership engineering team.

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. Full-time employees outside the U.S. receive a comprehensive benefits program tailored to their region of residence. USD salary ranges apply only to U.S.-based positions; international salaries are set based on the local market. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including experience and expertise, and may vary from the listed range.