Machine Learning Internship, PERPLEXITY
About the Role
Perplexity is hiring a Search Machine Learning Engineer Intern to help build the next generation of AI-powered search technologies.
This role focuses on improving search quality through retrieval, ranking and machine learning systems. You’ll work closely with experienced engineers across AI, infrastructure and product teams, contributing to experiments, model development and search platform improvements that directly impact how users discover information. This is a strong opportunity for candidates interested in machine learning, search systems and applied AI.
What You’ll Do
Support experiments to improve search quality through better models and evaluation methods
Build and improve components across retrieval, ranking and classification systems
Train and evaluate machine learning models, including LLM-based approaches
Support deployment and monitoring of search and ranking models
Help build and improve RAG pipelines for grounded answer generation
Collaborate with Data, AI, Infrastructure and Product teams to ship improvements quickly
Contribute to scalable and performant production ML systems
Who This Is For
Students or early-career engineers with strong foundations in machine learning and statistics
Candidates with coursework or projects related to search, ranking, NLP or recommender systems
People experienced with Python and ML frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow or JAX
Self-driven learners comfortable working in fast-paced environments
Strong problem-solvers interested in AI and search technologies
Bonus If You Have
Experience with search, recommendation systems or NLP projects
Familiarity with evaluation metrics or A/B testing
Experience with Rust
Why This Role Matters
Search and retrieval systems shape how people access information online. This role contributes directly to the development of AI-powered discovery systems, helping improve the accuracy, relevance and quality of next-generation search experiences.
