7+ years of backend software engineering experience with a track record of shipping production systems at scale.
Working knowledge of legal concepts; experience in legal operations or paralegal work is preferred.
Strong business judgment and practical problem-solving skills.
Proven experience in building scalable processes and foundational systems from the ground up.
Fluency with modern legal tech and AI tools; disciplined human-in-the-loop practices.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with ability to engage with senior stakeholders.
Entrepreneurial drive and intellectual curiosity to succeed in a fast-paced, ambiguous environment.
Responsibilities
Architect and develop Perplexity's Legal and Operations Engineering platform to automate manual legal work.
Oversee the entire lifecycle of the enterprise contracting automation system.
Deliver in-product legal features leveraging Perplexity and its AI capabilities.
Consolidate existing legal bots and workflows into a standardized, reusable platform.
Act as the technical liaison to the General Counsel, simplifying complex legal workflows into engineered systems.
Assess and replace external tools with internally built systems where beneficial.
Establish a precedent for engineering processes in non-technical departments, creating a playbook for other functions.
Benefits
Opportunity to work with cutting-edge AI technology.
Collaborative environment partnering with legal and operations leadership.
Involvement in foundational infrastructure development for a rapidly growing company.
Potential for significant impact on scaling legal operations.
Engagement with innovative processes and tech solutions.
Full Job Description
About the Role
Responsibilities
Architect and build Perplexity's Legal and Operations Engineering platform - a coherent stack of agents, workflows, and evaluation infrastructure that replaces manual, high-volume legal work across commercial contracting, e-discovery, enterprise redlining, subsidiary governance, vendor onboarding, and litigation and matter management.
Own the enterprise contracting automation system end-to-end.
Ship the in-product legal surfaces built on Perplexity and Computer itself
Consolidate today's ad-hoc legal bots, prompts, and scripts into a documented, observable, and reusable platform with clear conventions for personas, tools, evals, guardrails, and human-in-the-loop patterns.
Serve as the technical partner to the General Counsel. Translate complex, judgment-heavy legal workflows into engineered systems, and translate engineering constraints back to non-technical stakeholders.
Evaluate, retire, or replace third-party tools where a purpose-built internal system gives us a structural advantage.
Be the case study for forward-deployed engineering in non-engineering functions at Perplexity. Success here becomes the playbook for Legal, Recruiting, People, Workplace, and Operations.
What You'll Bring
3+ years of backend software engineering experience with a track record of shipping production systems at meaningful scale.
A working knowledge of legal concepts, with some experience in legal operations or paralegal work is desired.
Strong business judgment and practical problem-solving; comfortable making operational calls with incomplete information and calibrating risk in real time.
Track record building scalable processes and foundational systems from scratch, not maintaining a mature function.
Fluency with modern legal tech and AI tools; disciplined human-in-the-loop practices.
Excellent written and verbal communication; ability to work directly with senior legal, finance, and executive stakeholders.
Entrepreneurial drive, intellectual curiosity, and agility to thrive in an ambiguous, fast-moving environment.
Preferred Experience
Prior experience at an AI-native, SaaS, or consumer technology company operating at Perplexity's pace.
Familiarity with e-billing platforms (e.g., Brightflag), matter management, CLM, and entity management systems.
Comfort with ambiguity, rapid context-switching, and a builder mentality.
