Engineering Site Lead
$15k - $30k • London • FullTime
Posted 1mo ago
Remote Work Policy
On-site
Employment Type
FullTime
Categories
Applied AI Engineer
About the job
Perplexity is seeking an exceptional Site Lead to establish and scale its London office, a strategic presence in one of the world's leading tech hubs. This role involves building teams and culture from the ground up while driving technical excellence in infrastructure and AI systems. The Site Lead will serve as the face of Perplexity in London, responsible for building the technical organization, fostering a world-class engineering culture, and directly managing infrastructure teams. This position reports to senior leadership and collaborates cross-functionally with global teams.
Responsibilities
- Establish and lead Perplexity's London office, setting cultural foundations and operating principles.
- Build a collaborative, high-performance engineering culture aligned with Perplexity's values.
- Serve as the primary point of contact for London-based activities and represent the site in strategic discussions.
- Partner with HR, Finance, and Operations for seamless site operations.
- Drive local community engagement, partnerships, and Perplexity's brand presence.
- Directly manage and mentor one or more infrastructure or AI infrastructure teams in London.
- Set technical direction and strategy for London-based infrastructure initiatives.
- Drive architectural decisions and technical excellence across teams.
- Ensure robust systems for deployment, monitoring, scalability, and reliability of AI/ML infrastructure.
- Collaborate with global engineering leaders on technical standards and best practices.
- Build and scale high-performing infrastructure and AI infrastructure teams through strategic hiring.
- Develop and execute talent acquisition strategy for the London site.
- Create career development frameworks and growth opportunities for engineers.
- Foster technical mentorship and knowledge sharing across teams and sites.
- Partner with Product, Engineering, and Research teams globally to deliver infrastructure solutions.
- Coordinate with other site leads and engineering leaders for effective cross-site collaboration.
- Contribute to company-wide infrastructure strategy and roadmap planning.
- Facilitate knowledge transfer and best practice sharing across global teams.
Requirements
- 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, ML training/inference pipelines, and model serving 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.
- Experience at companies focused on AI/ML, search, or large-scale consumer applications (preferred).
- Previous experience as a site lead or similar multi-team leadership role (preferred).
- Background in building infrastructure for LLM training or inference (preferred).
- Contributions to open-source infrastructure or AI infrastructure projects (preferred).
- Experience scaling teams from 0 to 20+ engineers (preferred).
- Active involvement in the London or European tech community (preferred).
- MBA or advanced technical degree (preferred).
Benefits
- Competitive compensation including equity
- Comprehensive benefits package