Program Manager, Talent Acquisition

Location: San Francisco Workplace: Hybrid Perplexity is scaling at a pace few companies ever experience, and talent is the surface where our biggest bets get won or lost. We're hiring a Program Manager to sit at the center of that motion, owning the mission-critical, cross-functional programs that shape how we plan, prioritize, and hire. This is a uniquely visible seat, reserved for operators who thrive in ambiguity and have a track record of driving companywide initiatives to measurable outcomes. You'll work shoulder-to-shoulder with recruiting leadership, executives, and cross-functional partners to architect the systems, operating rhythms, and decision-making frameworks that let the company move faster and with more clarity. When a complex, high-stakes program needs an owner, you're the person leadership turns to. What You'll Do - Own Perplexity's most consequential talent programs end-to-end, from ambiguous mandate to shipped outcome - Partner directly with executives and recruiting leadership to turn strategy into programs with clear owners, milestones, and accountability - Drive cross-functional initiatives across Recruiting, People, Finance, and business leadership, aligning stakeholders and clearing blockers before they escalate - Design the operating cadence of the org: planning cycles, prioritization, reporting rhythms, and executive updates that keep leadership decisive - Build the systems, tooling, and workflows that let recruiting scale, automating the repetitive so human judgment goes to the highest-leverage work - Stand up the metrics and dashboards that turn hiring data into faster, sharper decisions - Anticipate risk on the highest-visibility programs, communicate crisply under pressure, and drive to resolution when priorities shift - Set the bar for program excellence and codify repeatable playbooks the rest of the company can adopt What You Bring - 7+ years of program or project management experience, including ownership of companywide, mission-critical initiatives - Direct experience partnering with and presenting to executives on high-stakes, cross-functional work - Track record of driving ambiguous programs to measurable outcomes in fast-paced, rapidly scaling environments - Operational rigor. You build order out of chaos and design systems that outlast you - Strong analytical instincts, with the ability to structure messy data into clear direction for leadership - Sharp communication and stakeholder judgment, with the discretion to operate on sensitive, high-visibility work - A builder's mindset and a bias for action, aligned with Perplexity's ethos of building what hasn't been built before - Recruiting, talent, or People-org program experience is a plus, but we're optimizing for the best operators first