Full-Time

AI Research Tech Lead at Perplexity

Company Perplexity
Location San Francisco
Salary $300K - $485K
How You'll Work onsite
Level senior
Sector Technology
Posted Posted on March 4, 2026

Job Description

Perplexity is seeking an exceptional AI Research Tech Lead to drive our research strategy and lead the development of our in-house Online LLMs, the Sonar models. In this leadership role, you will set the macro research direction across different modalities, mentor a team of researchers, and take advantage of our rich query/answer dataset to continue scaling our Sonar model performance and deliver the SOTA Online LLM experience to our users.

What you'll do

  • Define and execute the macro research direction across multiple modalities, including post-training LLMs for agent trajectories and future mid-training initiatives
  • Lead strategic research planning and roadmap development to advance Sonar model capabilities
  • Drive innovation in supervised and reinforcement learning techniques for query answering
  • Collaborate with leadership to align research priorities with product and business objectives

What you need

  • Minimum of 5 years of experience working on relevant AI/ML projects with 3+ years in a technical leadership role
  • Proven track record of leading and mentoring technical and research teams
  • A Computer Science graduate degree at a premier academic institution
  • Deep expertise with large-scale LLMs and Deep Learning systems
  • Strong programming skills with versatility across multiple languages and frameworks
  • Demonstrated ability to set technical vision and drive execution
  • Experience with pre-training and post-training techniques (self-supervised learning along with SFT/DPO/GRPO/PPO)
  • Self-starter with exceptional ownership mentality and ability to work in ambiguous environments
  • Passion for solving challenging problems and pushing the boundaries of AI research

XML job scraping automation by YubHub

Similar Jobs

Full-Time

Member of Technical Staff – Compute Infrastructure

xAI
Palo Alto, CA
More Info
Full-Time

Member of Technical Staff – Ads

xAI
Palo Alto, CA
More Info
Full-Time

Member of Technical Staff

xAI
Memphis, TN
More Info
Full-Time

Growth Marketing Manager – Lifecycle

xAI
New York, NY
More Info
Full-Time

Global Supply Manager – SaaS

xAI
Palo Alto, CA
More Info
Full-Time

Manager, Law Enforcement Response Team

xAI
Bastrop, TX
More Info

Receive the latest articles in your inbox

Join the Houtini Newsletter

Practical AI tools, local LLM updates, and MCP workflows straight to your inbox.