Member of Technical Staff – Software Engineer, Capabilities

Perplexity

Member of Technical Staff developing AI capabilities for the Perplexity agent. Collaborating on systems for Skills, Workflows, and Artifacts in a dynamic engineering team.

Posted 6/13/2026full-timeSan Francisco • California • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $220,000 - $405,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

Distributed Systems

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Build a deep, hands-on understanding of how frontier LLMs reason and where they break, then turn that into better engine and primitive design.
Bring each new model capability into the product as it reaches the frontier, including planning, long-running tasks, autonomous execution, and self-evolving skills and agents.
Work closely with the agent engine layer (context management, tool calling, planning, long-horizon execution) to turn frontier capabilities into reliable primitives.
Design, build, and own the primitives at the heart of Computer (Skills, Workflows, and Artifacts) so they compose into one coherent experience.
Build the evaluation systems (benchmarks, evals, rubrics, feedback loops) that make each capability best-in-class before broad rollout.
Set technical direction on ambiguous problems and raise the bar through design reviews, mentorship, and example.

Requirements

What you’ll need

8+ years of professional software engineering experience, shipping and owning complex systems end-to-end.
Strong backend / Full Stack engineering skills, with experience in designing and building scalable and reliable distributed systems, serving high traffic and a large user base.
Demonstrated technical leadership: you scope ambiguous problems, set direction, and drive cross-team projects to durable outcomes.
Strong product judgment and ownership instincts; you turn vague needs into simple, reliable systems and ship without waiting for perfect specs.
Comfort with data-informed decisions; you define the metrics and evals that prove a system works, and iterate on them.
Genuine interest in AI products, with hands-on adoption and a willingness to learn quickly.

Benefits

Comp & perks

health
dental
vision
retirement
fitness
commuter and dependent care accounts

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

software engineeringbackend engineeringfull stack engineeringdistributed systemsscalable systemsreliable systemsevaluation systemsmetrics definitionautonomous executionself-evolving skills

Soft Skills

technical leadershipproblem scopingcross-team collaborationproduct judgmentownership instinctsdata-informed decision makingmentorshipdesign reviewsiterationinterest in AI products