Engineering Site Lead - London
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 Gil, 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 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 Gil, 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 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.
The Role:
We're seeking an exceptional Site Lead to establish and scale our London office. This is a unique opportunity to shape Perplexity's presence in one of the world's leading tech hubs, building teams and culture from the ground up while driving technical excellence in infrastructure and AI systems.
Responsibilities:
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
Qualifications:
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
- 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
What Success Looks Like:
- Deep understanding of Perplexity's infrastructure, technology stack, and organizational structure
- Established relationships with key stakeholders across engineering, product, and leadership
- Initial hiring plan and culture strategy for London site established
- Help the Search, API, AI and Infra teams build out their hiring pipelines
- Core infrastructure team established and ramping in London
- Clear technical roadmap and priorities defined for London-based teams
- Site culture and operating rhythms established (team meetings, all-hands, cross-site syncs)
- London office actively participating in company-wide infrastructure initiatives
- London site operating as a high-functioning hub with 15-30+ engineers
- Infrastructure teams delivering measurable impact on system reliability, performance, and scalability
- Strong talent brand established in London market with healthy hiring pipeline
- London recognized internally as a strategic site contributing to Perplexity's technical leadership
- 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
Location: London, United Kingdom (Hybrid)
Perplexity is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.
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