Perplexity
Member of Technical Staff (Secure Intelligence Institute)
$220K–$405K
San Francisco · Staff · Full-time · Posted Oct 31, 2026
- Education
- PhD (or equivalent research experience) in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
About the job
Conduct security and privacy research on frontier AI systems and turn findings into practical defenses and security improvements for Perplexity products.
What you'll do
- Develop threat models, analyze risks, and create defenses for AI systems and products, including browsers, search, and autonomous agents.
- Build security evaluation frameworks, benchmarks, and datasets; partner with Security Engineering to ship security features and harden architectures.
- Publish research and collaborate with academic and industry researchers.
What they ask for
- PhD or equivalent research experience in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field, focused on security and/or privacy.
- Experience publishing original, impactful research at top security conferences, such as IEEE S&P, USENIX Security, ACM CCS, or NDSS.
- Deep expertise in at least one listed area: agentic systems security, systems security, web and applications security, program analysis, or software security.
- Proficiency in Python.
Nice to have
- TypeScript, Go, and/or Rust proficiency.
Pay
$220K – $405K (base salary); equity offered, amount unspecified.
Tools
Python, TypeScript, Go, Rust, IEEE S&P, USENIX Security, ACM CCS, NDSS
AI focus
Research and improve the security and privacy of frontier intelligence systems and AI-native products.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative