Offensive Security Engineer – Member of Technical Staff

About the role

Perplexity is looking for a hands‑on Offensive Security Engineer to join its technical staff. The role focuses on adversarial testing of cloud, application, and AI/ML systems, identifying real vulnerabilities before threat actors can exploit them.

Key responsibilities

• Plan and execute red‑team and purple‑team engagements across AWS, Kubernetes, endpoints, and application surfaces.
• Conduct continuous penetration testing of web applications, APIs, mobile clients, browser extensions, and internal services.
• Assess AI/ML attack surfaces such as prompt injection, model exfiltration, and tool‑use exploitation.
• Develop and maintain custom offensive tooling, exploits, and automation.
• Run open‑scope adversary simulations to test detection and response capabilities in collaboration with the defensive team.
• Drive threat‑modeling sessions with engineering to prioritize attack vectors.
• Deliver clear, actionable findings to technical and executive audiences and verify remediation.

Required profile

• 5+ years of hands‑on offensive security, red‑team, or penetration‑testing experience.
• Proven track record of discovering impactful vulnerabilities in production environments.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills to translate technical findings into risk narratives.

Required skills

• Programming/scripting in Python and Go.
• Deep expertise in cloud security (AWS, GCP, Azure) and Kubernetes/container security.
• Web and API application security testing.
• Experience with macOS/Linux endpoint security and network penetration testing.
• CI/CD pipeline security assessment.
• Proficiency with tools such as Burp Suite, Cobalt Strike, Sliver, Mythic, Metasploit, BloodHound, nuclei.