Role details
- Perplexity's API Platform brings our work in AI, search, and agent orchestration to developers.
- Our customers range from AI-native startups to some of the world's largest technology companies.
- Working with them, alongside our own developments in building Perplexity's core application gives our team direct exposure to how search, models, and tools are used to build and scale AI-native products and applications.
ABOUT THIS ROLE
We are looking for a Strategic Business Operations Lead to manage customer relationships and lead projects that help grow the API business.
The role
is roughly half customer-facing and half strategic and operational work, with an initial focus on building and improving our post-sale programs.
- You will own a portfolio of API customers, learning how AI-native companies and large enterprises evaluate, adopt, and scale AI infrastructure.
- Working closely with API leadership, you will help shape how the business operates and lead projects such as product migrations, customer enablement, and account coverage.
- You will put recommendations into practice, with results measured in customer adoption, retention, and growth.
RESPONSIBILITIES
- Manage a portfolio of API customer relationships, leading account conversations, understanding business priorities, and coordinating next steps across technical and commercial teams.
- Build account plans around adoption, value, and growth. Identify risks early and partner with Sales and account owners on renewals and expansion.
- Design and improve the post-sale operating model, including customer segmentation, account coverage, onboarding, health signals, and handoffs between teams.
- Lead strategic projects across the API business, with an initial emphasis on customer adoption and retention. Scope the problem, develop a recommendation, coordinate execution, and track outcomes.
- Run customer programs such as product and endpoint migrations, enablement, and rollout communications. Establish the audience, milestones, internal responsibilities, and follow-up needed for each.
- Coordinate customer communications for product updates, pricing changes, deprecations, and incidents, working with Engineering, Support, and commercial teams on accurate messaging.
- Analyze usage, consumption against commitments, renewal risk, and expansion signals to prioritize customer engagement and inform business decisions.
- Build practical reporting, workflows, and automation that help the team manage a growing customer base. Partner with Finance and Billing Operations to improve the customer experience around credits, commitments, and billing.
- Bring insights from customers into API planning and take on additional strategic initiatives as business priorities evolve.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
- 5+ years of experience in business operations, strategy and operations, consulting, customer success, account management, or a related role.
- A track record of taking ambiguous business problems from analysis through implementation, including projects that require coordination across multiple teams.
- Strong analytical skills: comfortable working with spreadsheets, usage data, and business metrics to identify a problem, test a hypothesis, and recommend an action.
- Strong relationship skills and a genuine interest in spending a substantial part of your time with customers. You can lead a conversation, understand their priorities, and take responsibility for the follow-up.
- Curiosity about APIs and AI products, with the ability to learn technical concepts and work effectively with engineering teams.
- Clear writing, commercial judgment, and the ability to balance ongoing customer relationships with longer-term projects.
NICE TO HAVE
- Direct customer-facing experience in a B2B technology company, including account management, customer success, partnerships, or solutions work.
- Experience with API businesses, developer platforms, or consumption-based revenue models.
- Working knowledge of SQL, CRM systems, or BI tools, and experience automating recurring analysis or workflows.