Application Security Engineer

Perplexity is an AI-powered answer engine founded in December 2022 and growing rapidly as one of the world’s leading AI platforms. Perplexity has raised over $1B in venture investment from some of the world’s most visionary and successful leaders, including Elad Gill, Daniel Gross, Jeff Bezos, Accel, IVP, NEA, Nvidia, Samsung, and many more. Our objective is to build accurate, trustworthy AI that powers decision-making for people and assistive AI wherever decisions are being made. Throughout human history, change and innovation have always been driven by curious people. Today, curious people use Perplexity to answer more than 780 million queries every month–a number that’s growing rapidly for one simple reason: everyone can be curious. 

Perplexity is seeking a highly skilled, experienced and hands-on Application Security Engineer to join our dynamic security team, revolutionizing the way people search and interact with the internet. You’ll build the systems, tools, and processes that make security seamless for developers and strong by default, enabling rapid innovation while protecting our users at scale.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement scalable, developer-friendly security solutions that integrate directly into engineering workflows
• Lead threat modeling, design reviews, and code reviews for new features and major product launches
• Build and evolve secure-by-default frameworks for authentication, authorization, input validation, and secrets management
• Develop and integrate automated security tooling into CI/CD pipelines (e.g., linters, dependency scanners, policy enforcement)
• Collaborate with product and engineering teams to remediate vulnerabilities, and contribute to incident response and postmortems
• Own, manage, and improve our third-party penetration testing engagements and bug bounty program, working closely with external security researchers to identify and resolve vulnerabilities
• Stay current on emerging threats and attack techniques, and drive ongoing maturity of our application security posture

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience in Application Security, Product Security, or similar roles
• Deep understanding of secure software development practices, threat modeling, and common vulnerabilities (e.g., OWASP Top 10)
• Familiarity with modern authentication and authorization patterns (OAuth, OIDC, SSO, Zero Trust)
• Proven track record of building secure infrastructure, reusable libraries, or developer tooling
• Proficiency with at least one major programming language (e.g., Python, Go, JavaScript, Java)
• Bonus: Experience with securing cloud infrastructure or AI/ML systems

The cash compensation range for this role is $200,000 - $280,000.

Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including, experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above.
 
Equity: In addition to the base salary, equity may be part of the total compensation package.
Benefits: Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance for you and your dependents. Includes a 401(k) plan.