Software Engineer AI Jobs in San Francisco, CA
Software Engineer AI jobs in San Francisco are concentrated in SoMa, Mission Bay, and the Financial District, with demand running across foundation model labs, enterprise SaaS, and fintech. Employers hiring right now include Pinterest, DoorDash, and Genentech. See the openings below and apply to the ones that match your experience.
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INTRODUCTION
Perplexity is seeking energetic engineers to join our highly driven Agents engineering team. The Agents team consists of backend, full-stack, and AI/ML engineers who collaborate to build delightful agentic experiences within our Comet ecosystem and Perplexity Computer, our platform for generalized frontier intelligence. Our vision is to empower our users with AI agents that can faithfully actualize their intent, however and wherever expressed, through open-ended interactions with the world.
As An Engineer On Our Agents Team, You Will Bring AI Expertise, Sharp Product Intuition, And a Tinkerer's Mindset To Advance The Frontier Of What Agents Can Accomplish For Our Millions Of Devoted Users. You Will Work Across Applied Research And Engineering To Solve Many Open Problems In AI, Including
- Designing AI agents to navigate the digital world and perform increasingly valuable units of work for our users;
- Training action and decision models that determine, based on complex multimodal states, how to accomplish user-specified objectives;
- Providing consistently excellent experiences across desktop, mobile, headless cloud, and other environments through flexible abstractions and frictionless backgrounding;
- Developing permission architectures, payload classifiers, and other methods to implement secure-by-design agentic capabilities;
- Designing optimal data representations and modes of interaction between agents and their environments;
- and much, much more.
Responsibilities
- Drive cutting-edge AI capabilities across multiple layers of a rapidly growing product in the AI agents space.
- Develop and leverage cutting-edge AI models, infrastructure, and browser technologies to advance the capability frontier and scale those capabilities for a rapidly growing userbase.
- Ensure a high craft and quality bar, in both AI agent performance and user experience.
- Collaborate with fellow engineers, designers, product managers, data scientists, and others across the company to integrate core Perplexity functionality into our frontier agentic products and vice-versa.
- Contribute to product reliability, code quality, AI evaluation, testing, and maintenance across the broader team.
QUALIFICATIONS
- Strong foundational familiarity with the full AI product stack.
- Proficiency in Python (bonus points for TypeScript, Go, and/or Rust).
- Significant experience in at least one of the following areas:
- Context engineering and tool interfaces for frontier AI models
- Post-training and reinforcement learning (particularly for multimodal models)
- Browser technologies (CDP, Playwright, extension development, etc.)
- Strong product intuition and taste for user experience excellence.
- Comfortable working with a small, fast-moving team, must be willing to dive in and take ownership.
- A passion for shipping products that surprise and delight.
COMPENSATION RANGE
- Compensation Range: $220K - $405K
INTRODUCTION
Perplexity is seeking energetic engineers to join our highly driven Agents engineering team. The Agents team consists of backend, full-stack, and AI/ML engineers who collaborate to build delightful agentic experiences within our Comet ecosystem and Perplexity Computer, our platform for generalized frontier intelligence. Our vision is to empower our users with AI agents that can faithfully actualize their intent, however and wherever expressed, through open-ended interactions with the world.
As An Engineer On Our Agents Team, You Will Bring AI Expertise, Sharp Product Intuition, And a Tinkerer's Mindset To Advance The Frontier Of What Agents Can Accomplish For Our Millions Of Devoted Users. You Will Work Across Applied Research And Engineering To Solve Many Open Problems In AI, Including
- Designing AI agents to navigate the digital world and perform increasingly valuable units of work for our users;
- Training action and decision models that determine, based on complex multimodal states, how to accomplish user-specified objectives;
- Providing consistently excellent experiences across desktop, mobile, headless cloud, and other environments through flexible abstractions and frictionless backgrounding;
- Developing permission architectures, payload classifiers, and other methods to implement secure-by-design agentic capabilities;
- Designing optimal data representations and modes of interaction between agents and their environments;
- and much, much more.
Responsibilities
- Drive cutting-edge AI capabilities across multiple layers of a rapidly growing product in the AI agents space.
- Develop and leverage cutting-edge AI models, infrastructure, and browser technologies to advance the capability frontier and scale those capabilities for a rapidly growing userbase.
- Ensure a high craft and quality bar, in both AI agent performance and user experience.
- Collaborate with fellow engineers, designers, product managers, data scientists, and others across the company to integrate core Perplexity functionality into our frontier agentic products and vice-versa.
- Contribute to product reliability, code quality, AI evaluation, testing, and maintenance across the broader team.
QUALIFICATIONS
- Strong foundational familiarity with the full AI product stack.
- Proficiency in Python (bonus points for TypeScript, Go, and/or Rust).
- Significant experience in at least one of the following areas:
- Context engineering and tool interfaces for frontier AI models
- Post-training and reinforcement learning (particularly for multimodal models)
- Browser technologies (CDP, Playwright, extension development, etc.)
- Strong product intuition and taste for user experience excellence.
- Comfortable working with a small, fast-moving team, must be willing to dive in and take ownership.
- A passion for shipping products that surprise and delight.
COMPENSATION RANGE
- Compensation Range: $220K - $405K
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Find Software Engineer AI JobsSoftware Engineer AI Job Market in San Francisco
Who's Hiring
- Pinterest23
- DoorDash8
- Genentech8
- Plaid7
- Scale AI7
Top Industries Hiring
- Technology & Software125
- Artificial Intelligence15
- Science & Research14
- Social Media9
- Banking & Financial Services8
Software Engineer AI Jobs in San Francisco: Frequently Asked Questions
How do I get a software engineer ai job in San Francisco?
The strongest path into San Francisco software engineer ai roles is through the city's dense cluster of AI-native startups and foundation model companies in SoMa and Mission Bay, where teams move fast and value demonstrated project work over credentials alone. Candidates who can show hands-on experience with LLM fine-tuning, inference optimization, or AI product integration stand out. Contributing to open-source AI projects and engaging with the local AI meetup scene also builds visibility with San Francisco hiring teams.
Which companies hire software engineer ais in San Francisco?
Employers hiring software engineer ais in San Francisco right now include Pinterest, DoorDash, and Genentech, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of June 2026. San Francisco's employer mix skews heavily toward AI-native startups, foundation model labs, and large tech companies with dedicated AI product divisions.
Are there remote software engineer ai jobs in San Francisco?
Yes, software engineer ai is one of the more remote-compatible engineering roles since the core work involves code, model experimentation, and data pipelines rather than on-site hardware. About 45% of software engineer ai openings tied to San Francisco are remote or hybrid as of June 2026, reflecting how broadly distributed AI engineering teams have become. Model evaluation, prompt engineering, and backend integration work are the functions most commonly offered remotely by San Francisco employers.
How can I get a software engineer ai job in San Francisco with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry path in San Francisco is through AI startups in the seed or Series A stage, which often hire junior engineers willing to work across the full stack rather than in narrow specializations. Entry-level ML infrastructure, data labeling engineering, and AI tooling roles at smaller SoMa or Mission Bay companies are common footholds. Building a public portfolio on GitHub with fine-tuned models or AI-integrated applications gets real traction with San Francisco hiring managers who screen candidates that way.
Which industries hire the most software engineer ais in San Francisco?
San Francisco software engineer ai roles concentrate in Technology & Software, Artificial Intelligence, and Science & Research, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of June 2026. San Francisco's position as the global center of foundation model development and AI-native product companies means these industries draw engineering talent at a scale few other cities match.
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