Engineering Site Lead

Site Leadership & Culture

• 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

Technical Leadership:

• 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

Team Building & Talent:

• 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

Cross-functional Collaboration:

• 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