Legal and Operations Engineering Lead

About the role

Perplexity is looking for a highly skilled and innovative contributor to join our team, focusing on building and scaling our legal and operational infrastructure. This role involves designing and implementing systems that automate high-volume legal workflows, supporting our rapid growth as an AI technology company. You will work closely with senior legal and operational leaders to translate complex legal processes into efficient, automated solutions that enhance our operational efficiency. The position offers an to apply your technical expertise in a legal context, helping to shape the future of legal operations at a AI firm. You will be responsible for developing scalable processes, establishing foundational systems, and serving as a technical partner to legal leadership, all while working in a fast-paced, entrepreneurial environment.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Architect and develop Perplexity's Legal and Operations Engineering platform, which includes a comprehensive stack of agents, workflows, and evaluation infrastructure designed to replace manual, high-volume legal work. This encompasses tasks such as commercial contracting, e-discovery, enterprise redlining, subsidiary governance, vendor onboarding, and litigation and matter management.
• Take ownership of the enterprise contracting automation system from start to finish, ensuring it is scalable, reliable, and integrated with other operational systems.
• Build and ship in-product legal features that are integrated into Perplexity's platform, enabling legal workflows to be directly accessible within the product environment.
• Consolidate existing ad-hoc legal bots, prompts, and scripts into a unified, well-documented, observable, and reusable platform. This platform should include clear conventions for personas, tools, evaluation methods, guardrails, and human-in-the-loop patterns to ensure consistency and reliability.
• Act as the technical partner to the General Counsel, translating complex, judgment-heavy legal workflows into engineered systems. This involves understanding legal nuances and constraints and effectively communicating technical solutions to non-technical stakeholders.
• Evaluate third-party legal tools and determine whether to retire, replace, or upgrade them with purpose-built internal systems that provide a structural advantage.
• Serve as a case study for forward-deployed engineering in non-engineering functions at Perplexity. Your success will help establish best practices and playbooks for deploying engineering solutions across legal, recruiting, people operations, workplace management, and other operational areas.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including legal, finance, product, and engineering to ensure the infrastructure supports the company's strategic growth.
• Support strategic planning and technical decision-making related to legal and operational systems, ensuring they are scalable, secure, and compliant with relevant standards.
• Focus on automation and scalability to enable the legal and operations teams to handle increasing volume without sacrificing quality or compliance.
• Maintain a deep understanding of legal workflows and identify opportunities for automation and process improvement.
• Develop documentation, standards, and best practices to ensure the platform remains maintainable and extensible as the company grows.
• Stay informed about emerging legal tech and AI tools, integrating new solutions where appropriate to enhance efficiency.
• Provide mentorship and guidance to other technical team members working on legal and operational projects.
• Participate in strategic initiatives to improve overall operational resilience and compliance.
• Ensure that all systems and workflows adhere to relevant legal, security, and privacy standards.

Requirements

• 7+ years of backend software engineering experience, with a proven track record of shipping production systems at meaningful scale.
• Knowledge of legal concepts, with some experience in legal operations or paralegal work considered a plus.
• Strong business judgment and practical problem-solving skills, with the ability to make operational decisions based on incomplete information and calibrate risk effectively.
• Demonstrated experience building scalable processes and foundational systems from scratch, rather than maintaining mature functions.
• Fluency with modern legal technology and AI tools, including disciplined human-in-the-loop practices.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the 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.
• Ability to translate complex workflows into technical solutions and communicate constraints and trade-offs clearly.
• Experience working in high-growth startup environments is preferred.
• Familiarity with legal workflows, legal tech, and automation tools is advantageous.
• Ability to prioritize tasks effectively and manage multiple projects simultaneously.
• Comfort working in a collaborative, cross-disciplinary team environment.
• Strong problem-solving skills and a proactive approach to identifying and addressing technical challenges.
• Willingness to learn and adapt quickly to new tools, processes, and organizational needs.

Nice to have

• Prior experience at an AI-native, SaaS, or consumer technology company operating at a similar pace.
• Familiarity with e-billing platforms such as Brightflag, matter management, CLM, and entity management systems.
• Comfort with ambiguity, rapid context-switching, and a builder mentality.
• Experience working with legal workflows, legal tech, or legal automation tools.
• Knowledge of enterprise software development best practices, including security, compliance, and scalability.
• Experience mentoring or leading technical teams in a startup environment.

Skills & tools

• Backend software engineering
• Infrastructure development
• Workflow automation
• Legal tech and AI tools
• Human-in-the-loop systems
• System architecture
• Cross-functional collaboration
• Documentation and standards development

Practical notes

This role is based on-site in San Francisco and involves working directly within our legal and operational teams. Candidates should be prepared to engage deeply with both technical and legal stakeholders, translating complex workflows into scalable, automated systems. The position offers significant growth potential and an opportunity to influence how legal operations are managed within a rapidly growing AI company. You will be expected to develop and maintain documentation, standards, and best practices to ensure the platform remains maintainable and extensible as the organization evolves. The role requires a proactive, entrepreneurial mindset, with the ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment characterized by ambiguity and rapid change. Candidates should be comfortable working closely with cross-disciplinary teams, communicating technical concepts clearly, and balancing strategic goals with practical implementation. This is an to shape the future of legal operations at a AI company, leveraging your technical expertise to create scalable, automated solutions that support our growth and innovation.