Offensive Security Engineer, Perplexity AI
$220-405k
Offers Equity
Conversational AI-powered search tool
Be an early applicant
Conversational AI-powered search tool
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$220-405k
Offers Equity
1001+ employees
Company mission
To advance the way people discover and share information.
Role
Who you are
- Perplexity is seeking a highly skilled, experienced and hands-on Offensive Security Engineer to join our dynamic security team, taking an adversarial approach to hardening Perplexity's infrastructure, applications, and AI systems
- 5+ years of hands-on experience in offensive security, red teaming, or penetration testing
- Deep technical expertise in at least two of: cloud security (AWS/GCP/Azure), web/API application security, Kubernetes and container security, macOS/Linux endpoint security, network penetration testing, or CI/CD pipeline security
- Track record of discovering impactful vulnerabilities or developing novel attack techniques in production environments
- Strong programming and scripting skills in Python, Go, or similar languages; comfortable writing custom tooling and exploits
- Experience with industry-standard offensive tools (Burp Suite, Cobalt Strike / Sliver / Mythic, Metasploit, BloodHound, nuclei, etc.) and ability to operate beyond them
- Excellent written and verbal communication; able to translate complex technical findings into clear risk narratives
- Experience assessing AI/ML systems, LLM applications, or agentic workflows for security vulnerabilities
- Bonus: Published security research, conference talks (DEF CON, Black Hat, BSides), CVE credits, or meaningful bug bounty contributions
What the job involves
- You'll plan and execute red team operations, penetration tests, and attack simulations across our cloud infrastructure, web and mobile applications, AI/ML pipeline, and corporate environment—finding real vulnerabilities before adversaries do and working directly with engineering teams to drive remediation
- Plan and execute red team and purple team engagements simulating advanced threat actors across cloud infrastructure (AWS, Kubernetes), endpoints, and application surfaces
- Conduct continuous penetration testing of web applications, APIs, mobile clients, browser extensions, cloud infrastructure, and internal services
- Assess AI/ML-specific attack surfaces including prompt injection, model exfiltration, agent abuse, tool-use exploitation, and MCP security boundaries
- Develop and maintain custom offensive tooling, exploits, and automation to improve the efficiency and coverage of security testing
- Perform open-scope adversary simulations that test detection and response capabilities end to end, collaborating closely with the defensive security team
- Drive threat modeling sessions with engineering teams to identify and prioritize attack vectors in new features and architectures
- Deliver clear, actionable findings to both technical and executive audiences; partner with engineering to validate remediations
- Contribute to the security of CI/CD pipelines, supply chain integrity, and secrets management through offensive assessment
- Stay current on emerging attack techniques, vulnerability research, and adversary tradecraft; bring external perspective into Perplexity's security strategy
Our take
As AI continues to drive changes in both business operations and day-to-day lives, Perplexity AI delivers an intelligent search engine powered by conversational AI, to improve search outcomes and "unlock the power of knowledge" for all.
Reaching impressive heights of 22M monthly visits, Perplexity's "ask anything" method of search is clearly a popular one. And what sets it apart from other search engines is in its answers, which are concise and fully cited, responding to the user query rather than simply providing a place in which they can scroll to find it themselves.
The company has raised substantial funding, with contributions from former execs at companies like OpenAI, Meta, and Quora, demonstrating the interest that it has drummed up in the space. Having doubled its annual recurring revenue between 2023 and 24, this investment will allow Perplexity AI to continue building out its product, and accelerate growth into the future.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Funding (last 2 of 9 rounds)
Sep 2025
$200m
LATE VC
Jul 2025
$100m
LATE VC
Total funding: $1.7bn
Company HQ
Financial District, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Aravind Srinivas
(Co-Founder, President & CEO)Former Research Scientist at OpenAI, who has interned in Research at Google and Deep Mind. Obtained a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Denis Yarats
(Co-Founder & CTO)Prior to co-founding Perplexity in 2022, Denis was an AI Research Scientist at Facebook AI Research, a Staff ML Engineer at Quora, and a Software Development Engineer at Microsoft.
Johnny Ho
(Co-Founder & CSO)Previously a Quantitative Trader at Tower Research Capital, and Engineer at Quora.
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