Level

Perplexity

Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Monetization)

Perplexity is hiring a Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Monetization) in San Francisco, United States. It pays $220k-$405k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Perplexity.

Level's read on this job

  • Level rates this software engineer role Little AI ●○○○: aI is not part of the work.
  • Pay on this posting starts 31% higher than the typical software engineer posting on Level.
  • The posting mentions Python, Go and Stripe among its tools and skills.
  • Level classes it as a mid-level role.
  • Perplexity has 131 other open roles on Level.

AI in this role

Software engineer to build billing and monetization platforms for agentic AI products.

pythongostripepostgresqlawsdocker
billing-systemsmonetizationdistributed-systemssoftware-engineering

In 2026, we launched Computer, the defining product for the new era of agentic AI. Millions of people now use Perplexity to transform knowledge into action, and every action an agent takes is metered, budgeted, and settled through the billing platform this role owns.

As a monetization engineer at Perplexity, you'll own the abstractions that let product teams ship new SKUs, run pricing experiments, and convert users into paying customers, without needing to understand billing internals. The usage-based billing system this team owns is foundational to Perplexity Computer and our agentic products: metering every agent action in real time, enforcing credit budgets, and settling costs across entirely new interaction models. You'll work across subscriptions, usage-based billing, and enterprise contracts to ensure every revenue path is reliable, observable, and easy to extend.

Tech Stack: Python | Go | Stripe | PostgreSQL | AWS | Docker

Why Perplexity is Different

  • Craftsmanship. We build high quality, tasteful products targeting both the AI native and AI curious.

  • Ownership. You identify the problem, design the solution and ship it.

  • Entrepreneurship. We think like founders, act with urgency, and hustle to deliver for each other and our users.

  • Scholarship. Work among highly talented peers, pursuing knowledge and truth, upleveling ourselves, our teams, and our products.

  • Partnership. We amplify each others' strengths, break down silos, and give selflessly to help our colleagues deliver excellence.

What you'll do

  • Design, build, and own the billing platform and monetization systems that power Computer and every paid experience across Perplexity.

  • Lead features end-to-end, from problem definition through technical design, implementation, and launch, including the billing API abstractions that let product teams ship new SKUs, pricing models, and monetization experiments with minimal friction.

  • Build and operate the subscription, invoicing, and usage-based billing systems that serve millions of users across consumer and enterprise plans.

  • Hill-climb on reliability: tiered SLOs organized by customer impact, proactive monitoring, and alerting to catch revenue-affecting issues before customers do.

  • Partner closely with Finance, Data Science, Growth, Security, Support, and go-to-market teams to keep billing data accurate, auditable, and compliant, and to expand payment method coverage and optimize authorization rates globally.

  • Build internal tooling that empowers Support and Finance to diagnose and resolve billing issues quickly.

Qualifications

  • 4+ years of professional software engineering experience.

  • Direct experience building or scaling billing, payments, subscription, or monetization systems.

  • Deep familiarity with payment processors (Stripe, Square, etc.), including subscriptions, invoicing, disputes, refunds, and webhooks.

  • Demonstrated experience and appetite for building in-house billing solutions that rival leading best-in-class buy options.

  • Strong backend engineering skills in Python with the ability to reason about complex distributed systems.

  • Experience with relational databases (PostgreSQL) and making data-informed decisions to prioritize work.

  • Strong product judgment, you translate user and stakeholder problems into simple, effective technical solutions.

  • Self-motivated with strong ownership instincts, you ship major features ahead of schedule and drive improvements without asking for permission.

  • Track record of cross-functional collaboration with Finance, Support, or Growth stakeholders.

  • Genuine interest and adoption of AI products and willingness to learn quickly.

Nice to have

  • 2+ years of hands-on experience with the Stripe APIs and SDKs.

  • Experience with usage-based or metered billing models, especially metering agent actions, tokens, or other non-traditional units.

  • Experience with Apple and Google Play in-app purchase billing.

  • Familiarity with growth experimentation and PLG/self-serve SaaS monetization.

  • Experience building platform constructs that support pricing experiments and A/B testing.

  • Full-stack experience (our frontend is Next.js/React/TypeScript).

  • Experience in a regulatory or compliance-heavy billing environment.

  • Time spent at a fast-growing startup or on a high-ownership engineering team.

How we rate this

Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Monetization) at Perplexity rates 30 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Little AI (AI Level 1 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Little AI. AI is not part of the work.

  1. ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
  2. ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
  3. ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
  4. ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

Billing SystemsMonetizationDistributed SystemsSoftware EngineeringPythonGoStripePostgreSQL

Also common in software engineer jobs at this level

Pay

This job starts at
$220k
Typical software engineer job
$168k

This posting starts 31% above the typical software engineer job. See software engineer jobs

Questions you could be asked

  1. Tell me about a project where billing systems was part of your work. What did you do?
  2. Tell me about a project where monetization was part of your work. What did you do?
  3. Tell me about a project where distributed systems was part of your work. What did you do?
  4. Tell me about a project where software engineering was part of your work. What did you do?
  5. Walk me through how you've used Python in your day-to-day work.

Adapt your resume

  • List these exact terms on your resume: Billing Systems, Monetization, Distributed Systems, Software Engineering, and Python. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
  • Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.

Want an expert to read your CV for this job?

Free. Send your CV and the role you want next. We reply by email within 2 to 4 business days.

Get new software engineer jobs by email

One email a week with the new software engineer jobs, each rated for how much AI is in the work. No recruiter spam, unsubscribe in one click.

Free. One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click.

Similar roles

Software Engineering roles that involve little AI, at other companies.

What kind of AI work fits you?

Answer 12 practical questions in about three minutes. Get a simple profile, the work it points to, and live roles to explore next.

Find my next step

More jobs at Perplexity

More software engineer jobs

Related searches

Same AI level

Jobs by city