Member of Technical Staff (AI Software Engineer, Agents)

Perplexity
San Francisco, CA

Who this role is best for

Geared toward AI engineers with experience in multimodal models and browser technologies, comfortable with cross-functional collaboration and rapid product iteration in San Francisco.

Best fit for

  • AI engineers with a background in post-training and reinforcement learning for multimodal models
    — “Post-training and reinforcement learning (particularly for multimodal models)
  • Candidates who have built agent harnesses and integrated AI with external tools and environments
    — “Engineer agent harnesses that connect powerful models with the environments and tools required to perform economically valuable work for users.
  • Individuals with a strong grasp of browser technologies and a history of working with CDP or Playwright
    — “Browser technologies (CDP, Playwright, extension development, etc.)

Things to consider

  • The role requires ownership and adaptability in a small, fast-moving team
    — “Comfortable working with a small, fast-moving team, must be willing to dive in and take ownership.
  • The position demands a focus on user experience and product intuition beyond pure technical skills
    — “Strong product intuition and taste for user experience excellence.

How to stand out

  • Highlight experience in designing secure permission architectures for AI systems
    — “Developing permission architectures, payload classifiers, and other methods to implement secure-by-design agentic capabilities
  • Showcase projects where you optimized data representations for AI-environment interactions
    — “Designing optimal data representations and modes of interaction between agents and their environments
  • Demonstrate your ability to integrate AI models with infrastructure and browser tools
    — “Develop and leverage cutting-edge AI models, infrastructure, and browser technologies to advance the capability frontier
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · HighAutonomy · MediumDecision Impact · Team

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • design and build agent harnesses
  • drive cutting-edge AI capabilities
  • develop AI models
  • ensure high craft and quality bar
Typical background
strong foundational familiarity with AI product stacksignificant experience in AI engineering

Skills & requirements

Required

AI EngineeringBackend DevelopmentFull-stack DevelopmentAgentic Systems

Preferred

LlmsAgentic Frameworks

Stack & domain

PythonTypeScriptGoRustAIMLLlmsAgentic FrameworksBrowser TechnologiesCDPPlaywrightExtension DevelopmentProduct IntuitionUser Experience ExcellenceAgentic Systems

About the role

Original posting from Perplexity via Ashby

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.

Source: Perplexity careers (Ashby)

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