Perplexity
Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Training Infrastructure)
San Francisco, US
Role snapshot
Perplexity is hiring a Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Training Infrastructure) on a full-time basis. This is a role based in San Francisco, US. The listing highlights AI Research & Systems.
- Company
- Perplexity
- Location
- San Francisco, US
- Job type
- Full-time
- Experience
- 2+ years
- Posted
- Oct 24, 2026
Who this role suits
People with roughly one to three years of experience who can own small pieces of work with light guidance and want to widen their scope.
How to prepare your application
- Check your résumé against the listed skills (AI Research & Systems) and give each one a concrete example: what you built or achieved, not just that you used it.
- Prepare two or three stories about work you owned end to end, including one thing that went wrong and what you changed.
- Read what Perplexity publishes about its product or team, so you can say clearly why this role and this company.
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About the role
Perplexity is seeking software engineers to join our Training Infrastructure team. We’re responsible for the large-scale RL and agent evaluation platforms that enable Perplexity to train state-of-the-art models and optimize agent harnesses.
We are full-stack engineers with a broad remit. If you join us, you’ll build the distributed systems that orchestrate AI workloads across global-scale compute infrastructure. You’ll also define novel user and agent interfaces for designing, managing, and launching experiments. You’ll create tools that make experiment results legible to humans and agents alike, enabling everything from ad-hoc experiment retrospectives to closed-loop autoresearch. And much more!
A strong candidate will possess both experience and passion for solving difficult problems at the intersection of AI, distributed systems, and research acceleration.
Qualifications
2+ years of experience developing and shipping distributed systems for compute-intensive workloads, with a focus on reliability, scalability, and performance.
Proficiency in a general-purpose backend language such as Python, Rust, C++, or Go, and experience with cloud infrastructure and container orchestration, such as AWS and Kubernetes.
Familiarity with reinforcement learning (RL), agent evaluation, or ML infrastructure, and an interest in building systems that accelerate experimentation and model development.
BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Why Perplexity is different
Craftsmanship. We build high quality, tasteful products targeting both the AI native and AI curious.
Ownership. You identify the problem, design the solution and ship it.
Entrepreneurship. We think like founders, act with urgency, and hustle to deliver for each other and our users.
Scholarship. Work among highly talented peers, pursuing knowledge and truth, upleveling ourselves, our teams, and our products.
Partnership. We amplify each others' strengths, break down silos, and give selflessly to help our colleagues deliver excellence.