went through Perplexity's design interview in late 2025, sharing now because someone DM'd me asking.
i've been staff designer for 4 years, ex-consulting, so i've been through a lot of these processes. Perplexity's was distinctive.
how it was structured
after a short recruiter call, i had a portfolio review session with two designers and a PM. then a design challenge session. then a cross-functional round.
portfolio review (60 min) this is where they spent the most time. they specifically asked me to walk through one project in high detail, not a polished top-down presentation. they wanted to see the messy middle: early concepts that didn't work, where user research changed the direction, how i handled pushback from engineering.
if you have a portfolio of finished polished case studies only, you might struggle here. they're not impressed by the outcome, they want to see your thinking.
they also asked: "what did you specifically design vs. what did a team design." be honest. if you led the IA but the visual language was someone else's, say that.
design challenge a product design problem focused on information density and clarity. fitting for a company whose product is about surfacing information. they gave me 45 minutes and expected me to talk through reasoning, not just show a solution.
what's different about designing for AI-forward products: one thing that came up repeatedly was how you design when the output is non-deterministic. what do you do when the AI sometimes gives a great answer and sometimes a bad one? how do you build user trust? i had opinions on this from prior work and that landed well.
one thing i'd flag: i didn't get the offer (they went with someone more senior), but the feedback was specific and honestly useful. they said my visual craft was strong but my instincts on information hierarchy for search-specific contexts needed more depth. fair.
worth interviewing there just for the caliber of the design conversations.