Member of Technical Staff (AI Researcher)
perplexity aiMillbrae, CA
Member of Technical Staff (AI Researcher)
perplexity aiMillbrae, CASenior L5
All Other Professional, Scientific, and Technical ServicesComputer Systems Design ServicesCustom Computer Programming Services
APPLY NOW (opens in a new tab)AI Research Scientist and Engineer Opportunities Perplexity is seeking top-tier AI Research Scientists and Engineers to advance our AI products and capabilities. We're building the future of AI-powered search and agent experiences through our Sonar models, Deep Research Agent, Comet Agent, and Search products. Join us in creating state-of-the-art experiences that handle hundreds of millions of queries and continue to scale rapidly. Team Structure Depending on your interests and expertise, you'll work on one of three specialized teams: Core Research Team (Horizontal) Focus on generating and improving base models that power all our products. This team works on foundational model capabilities, post-training techniques, building RL infrastructure that benefits the entire organization. Agent Products Team (Vertical) Concentrate on fine-tuning and optimizing models for our Deep Research Agent and Labs/Canvas products. This team bridges research and product, ensuring our agent capabilities deliver exceptional user experiences. Comet Agent Team (Vertical) Dedicated to developing and enhancing our Comet Agent product. This specialized team focuses on the unique requirements and optimizations needed for Comet's specific use cases.
Responsibilities:
- Research & Development
- Post-train state-of-the-art LLMs using the latest supervised and reinforcement learning techniques (SFT/DPO/GRPO)
- Leverage our rich query/answer dataset to scale model performance across Sonar, Deep Research, Comet, and Search products
- Stay current with the latest LLM research, especially in model training, optimization, and personalization techniques
- Implement preference optimization and personalization capabilities to enhance user experience
- Invent in-house improvements and optimizations to enhance state-of-the-art models
- Turn research ideas into algorithms and run experiments to launch new models
- Infrastructure & Implementation
- Own full-stack data, training, and evaluation pipelines required for model development
- Build robust and effective training frameworks (on top of Megatron/PyTorch) for post-training LLMsImplement necessary infrastructure and components to support cutting-edge model training at scale
- Integrate models seamlessly into our product ecosystem
- CollaborationWork closely with engineering teams to integrate models into Perplexity's product suite
- Collaborate across teams to ensure cohesive AI experiences throughout our platform
- Partner with product teams to understand user needs and translate them into model improvements
Qualifications:
- RequiredProven experience with large-scale LLMs and Deep Learning systems
- Strong programming skills in Python/PyTorch; versatility is a plus
- Experience with post-training techniques and reinforcement learning
- Self-starter with a willingness to take ownership of tasks
- Passion for tackling challenging problems
- Minimum 2-6 years of experience on relevant projects (depending on seniority level)
Nice-to-have
PhD in Machine Learning, AI, Systems, or related areas
Experience in post-training LLMs with SFT/DPO/GRPOC++/CUDA programming skills
Experience building LLM training frameworks
Academic publications and research impact
Experience with agent systems and multi-step reasoning
Background in personalization and preference learning
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Level
Senior L5
Location
Millbrae, CA
Occupation
Computer and Information Research Scientists
Industry
All Other Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services
Posted
2 days ago