# Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Computer Monetization)

**Company:** [Perplexity](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/perplexity)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA, New York, NY
**Role:** Backend Engineering
**Salary:** $220k – $405k/yr
**Experience:** 4+ years
**Skills:** Python, Go, Stripe, Postgres, AWS, Docker, Next.js, React, TypeScript, Distributed Systems
**Posted:** 2026-04-23

> Builds and owns billing and monetization systems for AI products, including usage-based metering, subscriptions, and enterprise invoicing. Requires 4+ years backend experience with Python, Stripe, PostgreSQL, and cross-functional collaboration.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Design, build, and own the billing platform and monetization systems that power Computer and every paid experience across Perplexity.
- Lead features end-to-end, from problem definition through technical design, implementation, and launch, including the billing API abstractions that let product teams ship new SKUs, pricing models, and monetization experiments with minimal friction.
- Build and operate the subscription, invoicing, and usage-based billing systems that serve millions of users across consumer and enterprise plans.
- Hill-climb on reliability: tiered SLOs organized by customer impact, proactive monitoring, and alerting to catch revenue-affecting issues before customers do.
- Partner closely with Finance, Data Science, Growth, Security, Support, and go-to-market teams to keep billing data accurate, auditable, and compliant, and to expand payment method coverage and optimize authorization rates globally.
- Build internal tooling that empowers Support and Finance to diagnose and resolve billing issues quickly.

## Qualifications
- 4+ years of professional software engineering experience.
- Direct experience building or scaling billing, payments, subscription, or monetization systems.
- Deep familiarity with payment processors (Stripe, Square, etc.), including subscriptions, invoicing, disputes, refunds, and webhooks.
- Demonstrated experience and appetite for building in-house billing solutions that rival leading best-in-class buy options.
- Strong backend engineering skills in **Python** with the ability to reason about complex distributed systems.
- Experience with relational databases (**PostgreSQL**) and making data-informed decisions to prioritize work.
- Strong product judgment, you translate user and stakeholder problems into simple, effective technical solutions.
- Self-motivated with strong ownership instincts, you ship major features ahead of schedule and drive improvements without asking for permission.
- Track record of cross-functional collaboration with Finance, Support, or Growth stakeholders.
- Genuine interest and adoption of AI products and willingness to learn quickly.

## Nice to Have
- 2+ years of hands-on experience with the **Stripe** APIs and SDKs.
- Experience with usage-based or metered billing models, especially metering agent actions, tokens, or other non-traditional units.
- Experience with **Apple** and **Google Play** in-app purchase billing.
- Familiarity with growth experimentation and PLG/self-serve SaaS monetization.
- Experience building platform constructs that support pricing experiments and A/B testing.
- Full-stack experience (our frontend is **Next.js**/**React**/**TypeScript**).
- Experience in a regulatory or compliance-heavy billing environment.
- Time spent at a fast-growing startup or on a high-ownership engineering team.

**Tech Stack:** **Python** | **Go** | **Stripe** | **PostgreSQL** | **AWS** | **Docker**

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