Engineering Manager; Multimodal Job Lake Charles area area,Louisiana USA,Software Development

Position: Engineering Manager (Multimodal)

The Multimodal team builds the experiences and infrastructure that move AI interaction beyond touch and text: realtime voice, vision, and the platform systems behind them. We own the full path from a user speaking into a device to an answer coming back: the realtime session infrastructure that connects clients to frontier audio models, the backend orchestration that routes, records, and supervises live sessions, and the SDK that powers voice and multimodal experiences across Perplexity’s apps
As Engineering Manager for Multimodal, you will lead the team building realtime voice and multimodal experiences across Perplexity. You’ll hire and develop engineers, set technical direction, and drive new products at the intersection of voice, vision, and agents
Lead the team building realtime voice and multimodal experiences across Perplexity, taking new products from first prototype to production launch
Own the team’s roadmap, deciding which voice and vision experiences to build next and what infrastructure they need to succeed
Hire and develop engineers, giving them ownership of meaningful technical problems and the feedback to grow
Shape the architecture behind the full voice experience, from a user speaking into a device to models, tools, and agents responding
Lead the systems that turn live conversations into action, connecting voice models to tools, agents, and long-running tasks
Guide the team through the latency, reliability, and scaling challenges of live voice, including session recovery and performance under load
Partner with SDK, client, infrastructure, and model teams to turn new audio and vision capabilities into experiences people can use across our apps
Use user feedback and production performance to improve the experience after launch and decide where the team should invest next

A track record of leading teams to ship complex projects in a fast-moving environment
Strong product judgment and the ability to translate user problems into clear technical priorities
Experience designing and operating production services in rapidly scaling environments on AWS or similar cloud infrastructure
Experience with Rust, Python, Go, or similar languages. We work primarily in Rust and Python
Genuine interest and adoption of AI products and willingness to learn quickly
A strong software engineering background in backend or distributed systems
Experience managing engineering teams, including hiring, coaching, and performance management
Clear communication and the ability to work effectively across teams
Experience with realtime media systems: voice, audio streaming, WebRTC, or low-latency transport
Experience with agent frameworks, tool-calling architectures, or sandboxed execution environments
Experience integrating LLMs, speech models, or computer vision into production systems
Experience leading projects across backend services, client SDKs, and user-facing applications
Time spent leading a team at a fast-growing startup or in a high-ownership environment