Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Applied AI)

Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Applied AI)

Location

San Francisco; New York City; Palo Alto

Employment Type

Full time

Department

AI Research & Systems

Compensation

$220K – $405K

• Offers Equity

U.S. Benefits

Full-time U.S. employees enjoy a comprehensive benefits program including equity, health, dental, vision, retirement, fitness, commuter and dependent care accounts, and more.

International Benefits

Full-time employees outside the U.S. enjoy 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 amounts listed above.

Overview

Application

Perplexity is looking for an Applied AI Engineer to design, build, and iterate on cutting-edge agents powering our core experience in Perplexity Computer. Working in this mission critical team, you will develop frontier context layer applications - fulfilling the curiosity of millions of users across the globe.

Key Responsibilities

Apply state-of-the-art

ML and LLM techniques to solve problems spanning

Personalization (LLM memory, context summarization, retrieval and ranking);

Contextual recommendations and Monetization applications

Build frontier agent capabilities on top of Perplexity Computer

Build auto research harness for both offline and online techniques, designing experiments and metrics that provide deep insight into quality and impact.

Own the entire model lifecycle from research to production: data analysis, modeling, evaluation, offline/online A/B testing, and iterative improvement and build autonomous harness for agent squad to explore different problem spaces.

Collaborate cross-functionally with engineers, PMs, data scientists, and designers to ensure our AI drives meaningful product improvements.

Stay at the forefront of ML/AI innovation by evaluating and incorporating emerging research and algorithms into the product lifecycle.

Preferred Qualifications

5+ years experience building and shipping robust AI products for large-scale, user-facing or data-driven products.

Strong software engineering skills (Python, production-quality codebases, collaborative development) and experience using agentic coding tools for large scale parallel developments.

In-depth experience with the full AI lifecycle

data analysis, rigorous evaluation, and ongoing monitoring/improvement.

Proven collaborator and communicator; excels in high-velocity, cross-functional teams.

Curious, driven by end-user/product impact, and passionate about advancing the state of applied ML and AI.

BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).

Bonus Points For

Experience with LLM context engineering or harness engineering.

Experience in mid-training or post-training frontier open source models

Experience in large scale user-centric and content-centric personalization challenges (user modeling, retrieval, content ranking, etc).