Internship - Machine Learning Research Engineer at Perplexity (Berlin, Germany)
Perplexity· Berlin, Germany·
Role details
Work type
Hybrid
Employment
Full-Time
Perplexity at a glance
AI-powered answer engine that returns real-time, cited answers, now expanding into an agentic browser and on-device agents.
Perplexity runs an AI answer engine that searches the live web and returns direct, cited answers instead of a page of links. It has extended that core into an AI browser (Comet), an on-device agent (Computer), a developer API, and vertical tools like patent search.
$1.7B raised · latest: Series E extension · $200M · 2025 (reported $20B valuation) · backed by Accel, IVP, NEA, SoftBank Vision Fund 2
Job description
Internship Program Berlin
Internship program: 12 - 24 weeks, full-time, in-person in the Berlin office.
Responsibilities
- Relentlessly push search quality forward — through models, data, tools, or any other leverage available.
- Train, and optimize large-scale deep learning models using frameworks like PyTorch, leveraging distributed training (e.g., PyTorch Distributed, DeepSpeed, FSDP) and hardware acceleration, with a focus on retrieval and ranking models.
- Conduct research in representation learning, including contrastive learning, multilingual, evaluation, and multimodal modeling for search and retrieval.
- Build and optimize RAG pipelines for grounding and answer generation.
Qualifications
- Understanding of search and retrieval systems, including quality evaluation principles and metrics.
- Strong proficiency with PyTorch, including experience in distributed training techniques and performance optimization for large models.
- Interested in representation learning, including contrastive learning, dense & sparse vector representations, representation fusion, cross-lingual representation alignment, training data optimization and robust evaluation.
- Publication record in AI/ML conferences or workshops (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP, SIGIR).
Why work at Perplexity
- 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.