Member of Technical Staff (AI Software Engineer, Agents)
About this role
Building robust agent harnesses and AI systems forms the core daily focus for engineers on the Agents team at Perplexity. Collaborating closely across backend, full-stack, and machine learning disciplines, team members develop foundational platforms like Perplexity Computer, the Comet ecosystem, and the Agent API to deliver seamless agentic capabilities. The group focuses on translating open-ended user intent into tangible digital actions through advanced interaction models.
Created to expand the frontier of generalized intelligence, the team solves complex challenges spanning applied research and production engineering. Engineers design agents capable of navigating digital environments, training specialized decision models, and building secure-by-design architectures. Ideal candidates bring strong product intuition, deep technical expertise, and a tinkerer mindset to scale reliable agent systems for millions of users.
What you will do
- Engineer agent harnesses that connect powerful models with the environments and tools required to perform economically valuable work for users.
- Drive advanced AI capabilities across multiple layers of a rapidly growing product in the AI agents space.
- Develop and leverage advanced 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 frontier agentic products and vice-versa.
- Contribute to product reliability, code quality, AI evaluation, testing, and maintenance across the broader team.
What you need
- Demonstrate strong foundational familiarity with the full AI product stack.
- Show proficiency in Python programming.
- Possess significant experience in context engineering and tool interfaces for frontier AI models, post-training and reinforcement learning, or browser technologies such as CDP, Playwright, and extension development.
- Display strong product intuition and taste for user experience excellence.
- Maintain comfort working within a small, fast-moving team with a willingness to dive in and take ownership.
Nice to have
- TypeScript proficiency
- Go proficiency
- Rust proficiency
Benefits
- Offers Equity
Skills and tech stack
Questions candidates ask
What tools and languages will I use on the job?
Engineers need proficiency in Python, with bonus points awarded for TypeScript, Go, and Rust. The role also involves working with browser technologies such as CDP, Playwright, and extension development.
What products does the Agents team build?
The team collaborates to build harnesses and AI systems powering agentic experiences like Perplexity Computer, the Comet ecosystem, and our Agent API. These products aim to empower users with agents that can faithfully actualize their intent through open-ended interactions.
What kind of background is needed for this engineering position?
Candidates need strong foundational familiarity with the full AI product stack and significant experience in areas like context engineering, tool interfaces for frontier AI models, post-training, reinforcement learning, or browser technologies. Strong product intuition and a tinkerer's mindset are also important for success.