---
title: 'Member of Technical Staff (AI Software Engineer, Agents) at Perplexity'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-ai-software-engineer-agents-perplexity-san-francisco-vgs9w3qfkzdf'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-13'
---

# Member of Technical Staff (AI Software Engineer, Agents) at Perplexity

- **Company:** [Perplexity](https://feeny.ai/companies/perplexity)
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $220k–$405k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2026-08-27
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-13
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/perplexity/50a2def5-adeb-4f13-99c1-88c32482b772

## Job description

Perplexity is seeking energetic engineers to join our highly driven Agents engineering team. The Agents team consists of backend, full-stack, and AI/ML engineers who collaborate to build harnesses and AI systems powering delightful agentic experiences. These experiences include [Perplexity Computer](https://www.perplexity.ai/computer) (our platform for generalized frontier intelligence), the [Comet ecosystem](https://www.perplexity.ai/comet), our Agent API, and more. Our vision is to empower our users with agents that can faithfully actualize their intent, however and wherever expressed, through open-ended interactions with the world. As an engineer on our Agents team, you will bring AI expertise, sharp product intuition, and a tinkerer's mindset to advance the frontier of what agents can accomplish for our millions of devoted users. You will work across applied research and engineering to solve many open problems in AI, including:

- Designing AI agents to navigate the digital world and perform increasingly valuable units of work for our users;
- Training action and decision models that determine, based on complex multimodal states, how to accomplish user-specified objectives;
- Providing consistently excellent experiences across desktop, mobile, headless cloud, and other environments through flexible abstractions and frictionless backgrounding;
- 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

- Engineer agent harnesses that connect powerful models with the environments and tools required to perform economically valuable work for users.
- Drive cutting-edge AI capabilities across multiple layers of a rapidly growing product in the AI agents space.
- Develop and leverage cutting-edge AI models, infrastructure, and browser technologies to advance the capability frontier and scale those capabilities for a rapidly growing userbase.
- Ensure a high craft and quality bar, in both AI agent performance and user experience.
- Collaborate with fellow engineers, designers, product managers, data scientists, and others across the company to integrate core Perplexity functionality into our frontier agentic products and vice-versa.
- Contribute to product reliability, code quality, AI evaluation, testing, and maintenance across the broader team.

## Qualifications

- Strong foundational familiarity with the full AI product stack.
- Proficiency in Python (bonus points for TypeScript, Go, and/or Rust).
- Significant experience in at least one of the following areas:
- Context engineering and tool interfaces for frontier AI models
- Post-training and reinforcement learning (particularly for multimodal models)
- Browser technologies (CDP, Playwright, extension development, etc.)
- Strong product intuition and taste for user experience excellence.
- Comfortable working with a small, fast-moving team, must be willing to dive in and take ownership.
- A passion for shipping products that surprise and delight.

## 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

- [Senior Cinematographer, Brand Studio](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-cinematographer-brand-studio-perplexity-san-francisco-2fyy35sdtdh1) — San Francisco, CA
- [Strategic Business Operations Lead, API](https://feeny.ai/job/strategic-business-operations-lead-api-perplexity-san-francisco-v9wgj13z5mkz) — San Francisco, CA
- [Technical Customer Success Manager, API](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-customer-success-manager-api-perplexity-san-francisco-8jsszbfvmpsm) — San Francisco, CA
- [Member of Technical Staff (Applied AI Engineer, Agent Capabilities)](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-applied-ai-engineer-agent-capabilities-perplexity-san-47rx693z06xs) — San Francisco, CA
- [Enablement Specialist, Perplexity Computer](https://feeny.ai/job/enablement-specialist-perplexity-computer-perplexity-san-francisco-n096fr55k7gk) — San Francisco, CA
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- [Product Manager, SMB Growth](https://feeny.ai/job/product-manager-smb-growth-perplexity-new-york-kd2qx39ttej6) — New York, NY
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