Member of Technical Staff (TPM, Inference)
About this role
Organized professionals who thrive on ambiguity and enjoy building new operating models from scratch will find a natural home in this role. Perplexity needs a technical program manager to act as the primary link between external model providers, engineering groups, and product departments. Operating one of the highest-throughput inference stacks in the industry means managing large traffic volumes across a shifting portfolio of first-party and third-party models.
Daily responsibilities include orchestrating cross-functional delivery, aligning external partners with internal timelines, and pushing new models smoothly into production. This position sits at the intersection of product, engineering, and finance to execute the roadmap for the core inference platform. Success requires strong technical judgment, a knack for balancing competing priorities, and the ability to build predictable release mechanisms at scale.
What you will do
- Execute the roadmap for the inference platform by managing request handling, rate limits, quotas, and reliability surfaces.
- Serve as the connective tissue between model providers and internal engineering teams to coordinate launches and capacity rollouts.
- Drive latency, throughput, uptime, and cost-efficiency as core execution metrics while balancing operational tradeoffs.
- Run the operating model for model-release and optimization programs across performance, infrastructure, and product teams.
- Lead cross-functional delivery for inference-stack changes through planning, launch, and post-launch validation.
- Build predictable release mechanisms such as rituals, dashboards, and launch checklists to maintain low risk at scale.
- Partner with GPU capacity and compute teams to reconcile execution decisions against cost and vendor constraints.
What you need
- Bring at least 6 years of combined technical program management or product management experience.
- Demonstrate strong background in infrastructure, distributed systems, or ML model-serving products.
- Possess direct experience with production LLM or ML inference for fast, reliable, and cost-effective serving.
- Show comfort orchestrating across external partners and internal engineering teams with competing priorities.
- Apply data-driven judgment to navigate tradeoffs between latency, throughput, uptime, and cost.
- Thrive in a small, agile team with high initiative and a desire for ownership.
Benefits
- Offers Equity
Skills and tech stack
Questions candidates ask
Where is this job located?
This position is based in San Francisco.
What is the salary range for this role?
The salary is between $170K and $265K with equity offerings.
What teams will I work with?
This role sits at the intersection of product, engineering, and finance, acting as the connective tissue between model providers and internal engineering and product teams.
What kind of inference stack does Perplexity run?
Perplexity runs one of the highest-throughput inference stacks in the industry, serving Ask, Computer, and API traffic across a constantly shifting portfolio of models.