Engineering Site Lead

Perplexity is seeking an Engineering Site Lead to establish and scale their London office, driving innovation in AI infrastructure and building a high-performance engineering culture. Perplexity is revolutionizing how people discover and interact with information through AI-powered search and knowledge tools. As we expand our global footprint, we're establishing a strategic presence in London to drive innovation and growth across Europe.

#### Site Leadership & Culture

• •Establish and lead Perplexity's London office, setting the cultural foundation and operating principles
• •Build a collaborative, high-performance engineering culture that aligns with Perplexity's values while embracing the strengths of the London tech ecosystem
• •Serve as the primary point of contact for all London-based activities and represent the site in company-wide strategic discussions
• •Partner with People/HR, Finance, and Operations to ensure seamless site operations
• •Drive local community engagement, partnerships, and Perplexity's brand presence in the London and European tech community

#### Technical Leadership:

• •Directly manage and mentor one or more infrastructure or AI infrastructure teams in London (5-15+ engineers)
• •Set technical direction and strategy for London-based infrastructure initiatives in alignment with company-wide goals
• •Drive architectural decisions and technical excellence across teams
• •Ensure robust systems for deployment, monitoring, scalability, and reliability of infrastructure supporting AI/ML workloads
• •Collaborate with engineering leaders globally to align on technical standards, best practices, and cross-site initiatives

#### Team Building & Talent:

• •Build and scale high-performing infrastructure and AI infrastructure teams through strategic hiring
• •Develop and execute talent acquisition strategy for the London site in partnership with recruiting
• •Create career development frameworks and growth opportunities for engineers
• •Foster technical mentorship and knowledge sharing across teams and sites

#### Cross-functional Collaboration:

• •Partner with Product, Engineering, and Research teams globally to understand infrastructure needs and deliver solutions
• •Coordinate with other site leads and engineering leaders to ensure effective cross-site collaboration
• •Contribute to company-wide infrastructure strategy and roadmap planning
• •Facilitate knowledge transfer and best practice sharing across global teams

• •Ground-floor opportunity to build and lead a strategic site for a fast-growing AI company
• •Work on cutting-edge AI infrastructure challenges at massive scale
• •Shape the culture and technical direction of an entire office
• •Competitive compensation including equity
• •Comprehensive benefits package
• •Flexible work environment
• •Opportunity to make a significant impact on how millions of people access and interact with information

#### Required

• •10+ years of experience in software engineering with 5+ years in infrastructure, cloud infrastructure, or AI infrastructure roles
• •3+ years of people management experience, including building and scaling teams
• •Proven track record of establishing or significantly growing an engineering site or office
• •Deep technical expertise in distributed systems, cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure), and infrastructure automation
• •Experience with infrastructure supporting large-scale AI/ML systems, including:
• •GPU infrastructure and orchestration
• •ML training and inference pipelines
• •Model serving and deployment at scale
• •Strong understanding of modern infrastructure technologies: Kubernetes, Terraform, container orchestration, CI/CD systems
• •Demonstrated ability to set technical vision and drive execution across multiple teams
• •Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills
• •Experience working in fast-paced, high-growth technology companies
• •Passion for building inclusive, diverse, and high-performing teams

#### Preferred

• •Experience at companies focused on AI/ML, search, or large-scale consumer applications
• •Previous experience as a site lead, office lead, or similar multi-team leadership role
• •Background in building infrastructure for LLM training or inference
• •Contributions to open-source infrastructure or AI infrastructure projects
• •Experience scaling teams from 0 to 20+ engineers
• •Active involvement in the London or European tech community
• •MBA or advanced technical degree