Engineering Site Lead

Perplexity is revolutionizing how people discover and interact with information through AI-powered search and knowledge tools. As we expand our global footprint, we're establishing a strategic presence in London to drive innovation and growth across Europe.
The Role:
We're seeking an exceptional Site Lead to establish and scale our London office. This is a unique opportunity to shape Perplexity's presence in one of the world's leading tech hubs, building teams and culture from the ground up while driving technical excellence in infrastructure and AI systems.
As Site Lead, you'll serve as the face of Perplexity in London, responsible for building our technical organization, fostering a world-class engineering culture, and directly managing one or more infrastructure teams. You'll report to senior leadership and work cross-functionally with teams across our global footprint.
 
The individual in this role will manage teams in LON themselves while also facilitating.
 
Responsibilities:
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 com