Member of Technical Staff (Offensive Security Engineer)

Job summary

Responsibilities

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.

• 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

What they're looking for

• 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…
• 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

Tech stack

• AWS
• Kubernetes
• GCP
• Azure
• Python
• Go