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Perplexity AI is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead the Multimodal team, which builds realtime voice and multimodal experiences across the platform. The team owns the full path from user interaction (voice, vision) to AI response: realtime session infrastructure connecting clients to frontier audio models, backend orchestration for routing and supervising live sessions, and SDKs powering voice and multimodal experiences across Perplexity's apps.
In this role, you will lead a team building realtime voice and multimodal experiences, taking products from prototype to production launch. You'll own the team's roadmap, deciding which voice and vision experiences to build and what infrastructure they need. Key responsibilities include hiring and developing engineers with meaningful technical ownership, shaping the architecture for the full voice experience from user input through model responses, leading systems that turn conversations into action by connecting voice models to tools and agents, and guiding the team through latency, reliability, and scaling challenges of live voice systems. You'll partner across SDK, client, infrastructure, and model teams to integrate new audio and vision capabilities into user-facing experiences, and use production performance and user feedback to drive continuous improvement and investment decisions.
QUALIFICATIONS:
- Experience managing engineering teams, including hiring, coaching, and performance management
- Strong software engineering background in backend or distributed systems
- Experience designing and operating production services in rapidly scaling environments on AWS or similar cloud infrastructure
- Track record of leading teams to ship complex projects in fast-moving environments
- Strong product judgment and ability to translate user problems into clear technical priorities
- Clear communication and ability to work effectively across teams
- Experience with Rust, Python, Go, or similar languages (primary stack is Rust and Python)
- Genuine interest in and adoption of AI products with willingness to learn quickly
NICE TO HAVE:
- Experience with realtime media systems: voice, audio streaming, WebRTC, or low-latency transport
- Experience integrating LLMs, speech models, or computer vision into production systems
- Experience with agent frameworks, tool-calling architectures, or sandboxed execution environments
- Experience leading projects across backend services, client SDKs, and user-facing applications
- Time spent leading a team at a fast-growing startup or high-ownership environment
About Perplexity AI
AI / Data / Infrastructure — AI answer engine and search product for consumers and enterprises.
