---
title: 'Engineering Manager (Agent Engine) at Perplexity'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/engineering-manager-agent-engine-perplexity-san-francisco-pyjccta1s68b'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-01'
---

# Engineering Manager (Agent Engine) at Perplexity

- **Company:** [Perplexity](https://feeny.ai/companies/perplexity)
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $300k–$485k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2026-10-31
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-01
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/perplexity/3f0dc0ad-aa9a-4cd8-aa75-245112f3b2de

## Job description

Perplexity is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead and grow our highly driven Agent Engine team. The Agent Engine team designs and builds powerful agentic experiences including [Perplexity Computer](https://www.perplexity.ai/computer), the Comet ecosystem, our Agent API, and more. In short, we build frontier intelligence systems for the world's most discerning users. As the engineering manager supporting the Agent Engine team, you'll bring AI expertise, sharp product intuition, and strong leadership and collaboration skills to advance the frontier of what agents can accomplish for our millions of devoted users. You'll lead, grow, and support a team in solving many open problems in AI, including:

- Designing frontier agent harnesses and systems to perform high-stakes, mission-critical work for our users;
- Leveraging action and decision models that determine, based on complex multimodal states, how to accomplish user-specified objectives;
- Providing consistently excellent experiences across local execution, headless cloud, custom executors, and other environments through sound system design and flexible abstractions;
- Developing permission architectures, payload classifiers, and other methods to implement secure-by-design agentic capabilities;
- Designing optimal data representations and modes of interaction between agents and their environments;
- and much, much more.

## Responsibilities

- Provide technical leadership across multiple layers of a rapidly growing product in the AI agents space.
- Develop and leverage cutting-edge AI systems and related technologies to advance the capability frontier and scale those capabilities for a rapidly growing userbase.
- Exercise sharp technical & product intuition to guide the team’s system architectures and product roadmaps.
- Drive product reliability, code quality, AI evaluation, testing, and maintenance for the broader team.
- Oversee hiring, onboarding, and mentorship for a rapidly growing team. Develop rigorous interview pipelines and work closely with recruiting to source candidates.
- Interface with the Perplexity co-founders to deliver strategic objectives that redefine what’s possible in the AI industry.

## Qualifications

- Strong foundational familiarity with the AI systems stack.
- Proficiency in Python (bonus points for TypeScript, Go, and/or Rust).
- Domain knowledge in at least one of the following areas:
- Harness engineering
- Agent Skills and plugin architectures
- Model training and reinforcement learning
- Browser technologies (CDP, Playwright, extension development, etc.)
- Strong technical intuition and taste for user experience excellence.
- Strong organizational skills for managing and delivering parallel technical projects; ability to guide highly-opinionated teams in making sound tradeoffs and prioritization decisions is critical.
- Experience managing engineering teams, including recruiting, growing, and retaining high-caliber talent.
- 8+ years of engineering experience, with at least 3 of those years as an engineering manager.

## About Perplexity

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Perplexity builds an AI-powered answer engine that delivers accurate, real-time answers to any question, serving curious minds and professionals who demand precision and speed.
- **Entity Type**: Private (total funding $1.7B across 16 rounds)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2022
- **Founders**: Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, Andy Konwinski

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: AI-powered search and knowledge retrieval, Software Development
- **Target customers**: B2C (general users), B2B (enterprise API customers), and power users seeking reliable information
- **Mission**: “AI for people who expect more – more accuracy, more agency, more signal, less noise.”

## Products & Services
- **Perplexity AI (Free Tier)**: Real-time conversational search engine that synthesizes web results with citations, accessible via web and mobile app. *Type*: SaaS
- **Perplexity Pro**: Subscription offering enhanced features such as advanced AI models, multimodal search, and increased usage limits. *Type*: SaaS (subscription)
- **Perplexity API Platform**: Enables developers to integrate Perplexity’s search and reasoning capabilities into their own applications. *Type*: API
- **Perplexity Browser Extension**: Brings AI-powered search directly into the browser for quick answers without leaving the page. *Type*: Browser extension

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available in provided sources (prior reports indicate ~$9B valuation as of 2024, but not confirmed in this data set)
- **Key Metric**: Total funding $1.7B (16 rounds); annual revenue ~$50M (LinkedIn estimate)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not explicitly listed in provided search results; widely known investors include IVP, NEA, Jeff Bezos, and others (not sourced here)
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount grew 11.3% YoY to 1,152 employees; operates in 54 countries; LinkedIn followers grew 131.8% yearly to >1.6M; active hiring across 48+ open roles including AI Research, Engineering, and Go-to-Market teams

## Competitive Advantages
- **Real-time, cited answers**: Unlike traditional chatbots, Perplexity grounds answers in live web results with transparent sources, building trust and accuracy.
- **Multimodal and agentic capabilities**: Continuously pushes frontier research (e.g., query-aware context compression, agents for knowledge work) that differentiates from generic LLM interfaces.
- **Vertical integration from research to product**: In-house AI research team tackles open problems unique to Perplexity’s scale, enabling fast iteration on novel methods.
- **Strong brand and user base**: Rapid consumer adoption with millions of monthly active users and high engagement.

## Strategic Focus
- **Pushing the frontier of search**: Evolving from retrieval services to code generation, agents, and full autonomy in knowledge work.
- **Expanding enterprise and API revenue**: Growing B2B footprint with API platform and enterprise solutions.
- **Global hiring and office expansion**: Offices in San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York, Austin, Washington D.C., London, Berlin, and Belgrade, with “4 days in office” hybrid model.
- **Investing in AI research**: Dedicated research division (Perplexity Research) exploring reasoning, agents, and systems to redefine how people navigate the internet.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture & Environment**: “Thoughtful support” culture with emphasis on craftsmanship, ownership, entrepreneurship, scholarship, and partnership. Hybrid schedule (4 days in-office) based on location.
- **Perks**: Daily catered meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner in office), office snacks, ride home program, commuter benefits, home office reimbursement, fitness classes, gym memberships.
- **Compensation & Benefits**: Competitive salary and equity packages; retirement plans with company match; flexible PTO; holiday shutdown between Christmas and New Year; 12 weeks paid bonding leave; comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance.
- **Relocation & Visa Support**: Relocation assistance and visa/green card sponsorship for eligible roles. Partners with immigration firm to support the process.
- **Engineering Excellence**: “Technical assessment for relevant roles”; values hands-on contribution, broad skill sets, and merit-based evaluation. Frequent Tech Talks and exposure to greenfield AI research problems.

## Sources
1. [perplexity.ai/hub/careers](https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/careers)
2. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/perplexity](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/perplexity)
3. [perplexity.ai](https://www.perplexity.ai/)
4. [linkedin.com/company/perplexity-ai](https://www.linkedin.com/company/perplexity-ai)
5. [research.perplexity.ai](https://research.perplexity.ai/)

## Other roles at Perplexity

- [Member of Technical Staff (AI Policy and Strategic Initiatives)](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-ai-policy-and-strategic-initiatives-perplexity-san-s1yq4fvk8jdc) — San Francisco, CA
- [Member of Technical Staff (AI Software Engineer, Agent Engine)](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-ai-software-engineer-agent-engine-perplexity-san-hs3tx849abbt) — San Francisco, CA
- [Member of Technical Staff (Secure Intelligence Institute)](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-secure-intelligence-institute-perplexity-san-francisco-q3g6c298fqjp) — San Francisco, CA
- [Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Training Infrastructure)](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-software-engineer-training-infrastructure-perplexity-b605dwa01nme) — San Francisco, CA
- [Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, API Platform)](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-software-engineer-api-platform-perplexity-san-jdzqqe9fwdmg) — San Francisco, CA
- [Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Acceleration)](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-software-engineer-acceleration-perplexity-san-601n30mk47ah) — San Francisco, CA
- [Procurement Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/procurement-lead-perplexity-san-francisco-n70x7eqeyyzp) — San Francisco, CA
- [IT Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/it-engineer-perplexity-san-francisco-501k89mczns8) — San Francisco, CA
- [IP Paralegal](https://feeny.ai/job/ip-paralegal-perplexity-san-francisco-skqk1c1qw004) — San Francisco, CA
- [Sales Enablement Operations Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/sales-enablement-operations-manager-perplexity-san-francisco-j5w3hdd6r60m) — San Francisco, CA