Legal and Operations Engineering Lead
$150,000–$250,000 year
RemoteUnited States or San Francisco, California, United States
Job Summary
Architect and build Perplexity's Legal and Operations Engineering platform, replacing manual high-volume legal work across commercial contracting, e-discovery, enterprise redlining, and litigation management. Own the enterprise contracting automation system end-to-end and ship in-product legal surfaces built on Perplexity and Computer. Consolidate ad-hoc legal bots, prompts, and scripts into a documented, observable, reusable platform with clear conventions for personas, tools, evals, guardrails, and human-in-the-loop patterns. Serve as the technical partner to the General Counsel, translating complex legal workflows into engineered systems and engineering constraints back to non-technical stakeholders. Evaluate, retire, or replace third-party tools where internal systems provide structural advantage. This full-time role is based in Palo Alto and reports to the Legal Operations Manager.
Required Qualifications
- 7+ years of backend software engineering experience with a track record of shipping production systems at meaningful scale
- Track record building scalable processes and foundational systems from scratch, not maintaining a mature function
- Fluency with modern legal tech and AI tools; disciplined human-in-the-loop practices
- Excellent written and verbal communication; ability to work directly with senior legal, finance, and executive stakeholders
- Entrepreneurial drive, intellectual curiosity, and agility to thrive in an ambiguous, fast-moving environment
Desired Qualifications
- A working knowledge of legal concepts, with some experience in legal operations or paralegal work
- Prior experience at an AI-native, SaaS, or consumer technology company operating at Perplexity's pace
- Familiarity with e-billing platforms (e.g., Brightflag), matter management, CLM, and entity management systems
- Comfort with ambiguity, rapid context-switching, and a builder mentality
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