Member of Technical Staff (Model Behavior)
At a glance
Senior Software Engineering role at Perplexity. San Francisco · full-time · $200,000–$330,000 base.
techroles summary, based on the employer's posting.
What you'll do
- Design and tune prompts, tools, skills and memory so model responses fit different products and use cases
- Build feedback loops that improve prompt quality, tool and skill use, and models’ use of memory
- Test and help ship new models, then investigate output failures in internal and production systems
- Share practical guidance on prompt and context design with engineers across teams
- Follow new prompting, context and alignment methods, then bring useful approaches to the team
What you bring
- At least two years in software engineering or research, with strong grounding in engineering fundamentals
- You understand LLM-based and agentic systems and have shaped model behavior through prompts, tools, skills or memory
- You communicate technical ideas clearly in writing and conversation to people with varied backgrounds
Who this fits
This senior role suits someone who combines software engineering or research experience with an analytical, experimental approach to model behavior. It is based in San Francisco and follows a hybrid arrangement.
From the employer
About the Role
We're hiring software engineers for the Model Behavior team to help shape how Perplexity’s AI products behave: the style of their responses, and the way they use tools, skills, and memory. The team designs prompt and context engineering strategies to deliver high-quality user experiences across multiple domains and models.
The ideal candidate for this role has a strong software engineering background, and an analytical, experiment-driven approach to solving challenging problems. You’ll work on context and prompt engineering to shape model behavior and style, and to guide how models use tools, skills, and memory across our products.
What you'll do
Context Engineering: Design, test, and optimize the prompts, skills, tools, and memory that shape Perplexity responses across products, features, and use cases. Build self-improvement loops to steer the prompt, improve tool/skill use, and improve the ability to draw on memory.
Model Releases: Help experiment with and release new models.
Research & Analysis: Identify inconsistencies and failure modes in model outputs through well-designed research projects, for both internal and production systems.
Knowledge Sharing: Help engineers across teams build intuition for prompt design and context engineering best practices.
Staying Current: Track the latest prompting, context engineering, and alignment techniques from industry and academia, and bring the best ideas back to the team.
What We're Looking For
Required
2 to 10+ years of experience in software engineering or research.
Strong background in software engineering fundamentals, and a technical understanding of LLM-driven and agentic systems.
Experience shaping LLM behavior through prompts, tool and skill design, or memory systems.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, particularly in explaining complex concepts to diverse stakeholders.
Nice to have
Recent experience working on modern LLM-driven products.
Experience working across teams or with external partners.
Experience designing evaluations or benchmarks for AI systems.
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