Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Security)

Perplexity

ABOUT THE ROLE Perplexity is seeking a hands-on Software Engineer to build and evolve the software, automations, and systems that power our security operations. This role focuses on engineering security tools and internal AI-driven agents that improve detection and response, vulnerability management, and the overall security posture of our products and infrastructure. RESPONSIBILITIES - Design, build, and maintain software and automation that improves our detection and response program, including alert enrichment, triage workflows, and investigation tooling. - Implement and enhance internal AI agents and security bots that assist with monitoring, investigations, reporting, and other security operation tasks. - Develop and operate systems and workflows that support the bug bounty and vulnerability disclosure program, including intake, triage, prioritization, and remediation tracking. - Partner with product and engineering teams to threat model new features and systems, propose mitigations, and add guardrails into designs and implementations. - Contribute to secure-by-default libraries, services, and patterns that make it easy for teams to build secure features. - Integrate security signals from cloud, endpoints, SaaS, and applications into cohesive pipelines and data models that support detection and analysis. - Build automation to reduce manual work in incident response, containment, and remediation. - Collaborate with security engineers and other software engineers to review designs and code, and to continuously improve our security tooling and platforms. QUALIFICATIONS - 4+ years of experience as a software engineer with significant time spent building security-related tools, platforms, or automations, or in a security engineering role with strong software development responsibilities. - Proficiency in at least one major programming language (such as Python, Go, or TypeScript) and experience building production services, CLIs, or internal tools. - Experience integrating with security-relevant systems such as logging pipelines, SIEMs, EDR, cloud APIs, or identity platforms. - Practical experience with threat modeling, secure design, or application security reviews for services or features. - Experience operating or contributing to bug bounty or vulnerability management programs is a plus. - Familiarity with cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred) and modern SaaS environments. - Ability to work closely with cross-functional teams, own projects end-to-end, and ship pragmatic, high-impact improvements. - Bonus: Experience designing or improving AI-powered agents or automation used for security operations.