How to Get a Job at Perplexity AI

Perplexity Details & History

Perplexity AI is a search and AI research company best known for its conversational search engine, which combines natural language generation with up-to-date web results. Founded in August 2022 by former engineers and researchers from OpenAI, Meta, and Quora, Perplexity aims to rethink how people search online—moving beyond traditional link-based search engines to real-time, cited answers generated by AI.

The company has positioned itself as a direct alternative to Google Search and a more transparent option than some generative AI chatbots, with built-in citations and live web access.

In January 2024, Perplexity raised $73.6 million in Series B funding from investors including IVP, NEA, Nvidia, and Jeff Bezos (via Bezos Expeditions), bringing its valuation to around $520 million. It’s gained rapid traction among developers, researchers, and knowledge workers looking for fast, reliable answers without the noise of traditional search.

Perplexity Office Locations

As of writiting this in 2025, Perplexity AI is a remote-first company, but it is headquartered in San Francisco, California. The team is still lean, with under 50 employees according to recent reports, and many are distributed across the U.S. and globally.

Perplexity Primary Competitors

Perplexity AI competes across two main categories:

1. AI-Powered Search Engines

• Google Search (with Bard/Gemini integration)
• Microsoft Bing (powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4)
• You.com (another AI-native search engine)
• Neeva (before its acquisition by Snowflake)

2. AI Assistants & Answer Engines

• ChatGPT (OpenAI) – especially with browsing tools
• Claude (Anthropic)
• Gemini (Google DeepMind) – especially in Google Workspace
• Arc Search (from The Browser Company)

Perplexity differentiates itself by blending real-time search + citation-based LLM answers, positioning it as more reliable and web-grounded than purely generative tools.

Top Perplexity Departments for Entry-Level Roles

Perplexity is a small, engineering-heavy startup, so most entry-level roles are focused in:

• Machine Learning & Data Science – Ideal for candidates with academic or project experience in LLMs, NLP, or AI safety.
• Software Engineering – Full-stack and backend engineers with experience in Python, TypeScript, and AI APIs are most in-demand.
• Product & Growth – As Perplexity scales, they’ve been hiring for roles tied to user acquisition, growth experimentation, and product UX.
• Trust & Safety – Given their public-facing AI product, there's growing interest in hiring for content moderation, bias evaluation, and policy roles.

Bridged Note: Many roles require some prior experience or personal projects due to the company’s small team size and fast pace.

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Diversity at Perplexity

Perplexity AI has not publicly released detailed diversity statistics as of 2025. However, like many early-stage AI startups, its founding team has a strong technical background but limited public-facing DEI statements or transparency on team demographics.

That said, the company has hired talent from a wide mix of organizations—including OpenAI, Meta, DeepMind, and academia—which suggests an openness to diverse professional paths. They’re also known for being responsive on social platforms and engaging with a global user base.

For applicants prioritizing inclusive hiring, it may be worth asking about internal DEI efforts during the interview process.

Is remote work allowed at Perplexity?

Yes. Perplexity AI is a remote-friendly and remote-first company. Most of the team works distributed across the U.S. and internationally, although its official headquarters is in San Francisco.

Expect async-friendly communication, flexibility in working hours, and a collaborative culture built around Slack, GitHub, and product velocity.

Is it hard to get a job with Perplexity?

Yes—Perplexity AI is a competitive place to land a role, especially for engineers. Here’s why:

• The team is still small (under 50 people as of early 2025)
• They tend to hire candidates with deep technical skills or startup experience
• They receive strong inbound interest due to their visibility and backing (Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, etc.)

That said, candidates who stand out with:

• LLM/NLP side projects
• Contributions to open-source or AI forums
• Product thinking around user experience in AI tools
  have a much better shot.

Does Perplexity have good benefits?

While details aren’t widely published, current and former employees (via levels.fyi and aggregated public threads) suggest that Perplexity offers:

• Competitive salaries and equity
• Flexible remote work
• Health, dental, and vision insurance
• Tech setup stipends or reimbursements

As a venture-backed startup, perks may not be as expansive as big tech FAANG (/MAANG lol) companies—but the compensation and learning opportunities are often strong for early-stage joiners.

Who is Perplexity looking to hire?

Perplexity is hiring for technical, product, and growth roles with a strong emphasis on people who can operate autonomously and ship fast.

They typically look for:

• Experienced engineers with backgrounds in AI, search, or large-scale infrastructure
• Machine learning researchers with expertise in LLMs, NLP, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and human feedback
• Product thinkers who can blend UX intuition with a data-driven mindset
• Growth & content leads to help scale user acquisition and community engagement

The bar is high: most roles favor candidates with startup experience, open-source contributions, or deep expertise in AI tooling. However, they’ve also hired scrappy generalists with a track record of building and iterating quickly.

Perplexity Values

Perplexity AI’s core values—highlighted on their careers page—are central to their culture and hiring philosophy. They emphasize:

• Curiosity: Constantly questioning assumptions, exploring new angles, and asking “what if?”
• Velocity: Building fast, iterating rapidly, and continuously improving.
• Ownership: Delivering high-quality work, taking initiative, and striving for meaningful impact.
• Quality: Creating simple yet powerful tools that improve users’ lives.
• Communication: Listening openly and engaging transparently both internally and with users.
• Adaptability: Embracing change and remaining flexible to fuel innovation and growth.

Perplexity Interview Process

Perplexity's interview process is fairly standard. We've aggregated across sources to figure out what it is for you: 

Perplexity AI Interview Process – What to Expect

We’ve aggregated insights from multiple reliable sources to give you an updated and accurate breakdown of the Perplexity AI interview process.

1. Recruiter / Introductory Call (~30–45 min)
Initial conversation with a recruiter to review your background, motivations, and alignment with Perplexity’s mission. Candidates may be asked to submit writing samples or other materials depending on the role.

2. Technical or Case Interview (~60–90 min)
For engineering roles, this often includes a coding exercise (live or take-home) using platforms like CodeSignal or Colab. For roles like data science or product, it may be a case interview working through real work scenarios.

3. Hiring Manager Interview (~45–60 min)
A deeper dive into your past projects, decision-making skills, technical tradeoffs, and overall fit. Expect thoughtful evaluation of clarity, problem framing, and ownership mindset.

4. Onsite / Virtual Panel (~3–4 hours total)
Typically several interviews covering:

• Coding & Algorithmic Challenges
• System Design or Role-Specific Problems
• Behavioral / Values Alignment – how well you align with Perplexity's culture and values. This round is meant to simulate real-world cross-functional collaboration.‍

Key Bridged Takeaways

• The timeline is usually 3–4 weeks, and the process is described as vendor-respectful, transparent, and structured.
• Evaluation spans technical skill, ambiguity tolerance, alignment with company values, and ability to communicate clearly.
• While there were past restrictions on AI tool usage in applications, current expectations appear to focus on how thoughtfully candidates use tools like GPT or Perplexity—not whether.
  

Perplexity Internship Program

As of 2025, Perplexity AI does not appear to have a formal internship program. The team is still small and focused on shipping core features quickly. However, they have occasionally hired early-career contributors or contractors on a project basis—especially those with strong technical portfolios or open-source involvement.

If you're looking to get on their radar:

• Build with their API
• Share feedback on Twitter or Reddit
• Publish open-source tools or plugins that integrate with Perplexity

Perplexity MBA Program

Perplexity AI does not currently offer dedicated MBA internships or post-MBA roles, and they have not signaled a focus on traditional MBA hiring paths.

That said, MBAs with technical backgrounds or startup experience (especially in product, ops, or growth) could still be competitive—particularly if they’ve built something AI-adjacent or bring niche user acquisition skills.

Your best bet as an MBA would be to reach out with a focused proposal (e.g. growth strategy, international expansion, B2B channel partnerships) and show how you can make an impact immediately.

We’ve developed a tried-and-true process to help Bridged readers land jobs at top-tier tech companies—and Perplexity AI is no exception. While it’s a competitive, fast-paced environment, there are clear steps you can take to improve your odds. The biggest factor? Gaining the right kind of experience. Read on for our recommendations.

Identify Your Target Role

Perplexity is still a lean team, and most of their hires are deeply technical or product-focused. We recommend starting with our Best Entry-Level Tech Jobs. guide to better understand what kinds of roles might align with your background.

If you’re passionate about redefining how people search the web and want to work on cutting-edge AI applications, you might thrive in:

• Machine Learning Engineering (especially LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation, personalization)
• Software Engineering (backend systems, platform, or mobile)
• Product Roles (AI agents, UX, analytics)
• Growth & Developer Relations (especially if you’ve built with LLM APIs)

Explore Ways to Get Experience

You don’t need a Stanford CS degree to get hired by Perplexity—but you do need to demonstrate strong technical ability, product intuition, and curiosity about AI search.

Great ways to build experience:

• Review foundational courses like Andrew Ng’s Machine Learning Specialization or our AI Survival Guide
• Build personal projects using LLM APIs like OpenAI, Claude, or Perplexity itself
• Analyze search UX and prototype improvements to existing products (e.g., AI summaries, citation transparency, mobile interface)
• Contribute to open-source repos focused on RAG, embeddings, or semantic search

Perplexity values builders—so real-world projects or even unsolicited UX/product suggestions can go a long way.

Use Jobscan to Optimize Your Resume

Perplexity uses Greenhouse for hiring, which means your resume may be scanned by software before reaching a recruiter or hiring manager.

To improve your odds:

• Use Jobscan to match your resume against Perplexity’s job descriptions
• Match job titles exactly (e.g., “Software Engineer – Search Infrastructure”)
• Include relevant keywords like “retrieval,” “RAG,” “LLMs,” “inference infrastructure,” “React,” or “Go,” depending on the role

Small tweaks can determine whether you get seen—or lost in the stack.

Use LinkedIn Premium to Find and Reach Out to Perplexity Employees

Perplexity is still a small company—meaning many roles come down to referrals and visibility.

We recommend:

• Using LinkedIn Premium to find current team members in your area of interest (e.g., “ML Engineer” or “iOS Developer” at Perplexity)
• Searching for titles like Technical Recruiter, Founding Engineer, or Product Lead
• Sending a concise, personalized message. Reference a feature you admire (like their live citations or new agent experience) and share what you’re working on or building

A warm intro from someone inside—even casually—can help your application stand out in a sea of talented candidates.

And Finally: Be Patient

Perplexity AI is fast-growing, mission-driven, and incredibly selective. But they also value initiative, curiosity, and momentum.

If you don’t land the role on the first try, keep going:

• Build in public
• Stay sharp on AI trends
• Reach out again with a new project or skillset

You’re learning the right things—and the effort you're putting in now could lead to the perfect opportunity later.

→ Your future job might just be one course, one project, or one message away. Keep building.

Final Take: Is Perplexity AI the Right Fit for You?

If you're excited by the idea of reshaping how the world searches for information—and you thrive in fast-paced, high-ownership environments—Perplexity AI could be an incredible place to grow your career.

While the bar is high, so is the impact. From real-time AI search to personalized agentic tools, Perplexity is building products that are pushing the frontier of what’s possible with AI. Whether you’re an engineer, a researcher, or a product thinker, this is the kind of place where curiosity and execution go hand in hand.

Even if you’re not quite ready yet, now is the time to start building the skills and projects that can help you stand out. Keep learning, keep shipping—and keep going. The future of AI needs smart people like you.

Did you get something out of this article? Let us know at hello@getbridged.co