Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Infrastructure & Platform)
Infrastructure engineer at Perplexity building and operating the foundational distributed systems behind its AI answer engine — real-time search, retrieval, model serving, and agent workloads. The role spans compute, storage, networking, data, and reliability, with ownership from architecture through production operation.
- Compensation
- $220K–$405K / yr
- Location
- San Francisco
- Work setup
- Hybrid
- Seniority
- Not specified
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- 4+ years
- Category
- Software engineering
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- 4+ years of professional software engineering experience building and operating production backend, platform, or distributed systems
- Track record of owning complex production systems end to end and delivering sustained technical impact across teams
- Demonstrated ability to set technical direction, lead through influence, and raise the engineering bar via architecture, design reviews, and mentorship
- Strong software engineering skills in Python or other systems/backend languages such as Go, Rust, C++, or Java
- Meaningful experience across at least two infrastructure domains (e.g., cloud platforms, distributed systems, Kubernetes, storage, databases, networking, data systems, developer infrastructure, produc
- Ability to develop depth quickly in unfamiliar systems, reason across software and infrastructure layers, and drive production incidents from diagnosis through durable resolution
Full description
About the Role
The Infrastructure team builds and operates the foundational systems behind Perplexity’s products. At Perplexity, infrastructure sits on the critical path of every answer, supporting real-time search, retrieval, model serving, and agent workloads where latency, reliability, and rapid iteration directly shape the user experience. This role is for strong infrastructure engineers whose experience spans multiple domains and who are energized by cross-cutting problems that do not fit neatly within a single platform team.
You do not need to be a specialist in every area. Scope ranges from owning major production systems to setting technical direction across teams, leading complex infrastructure programs, and shaping infrastructure strategy across the organization. If a specialized Cloud Infrastructure, Storage Platform, Backend Platform, Data Platform, Connector Platform, or AI Acceleration role clearly matches your expertise and interests, apply directly to it. If your experience spans several infrastructure domains or you are most energized by cross-cutting systems problems, apply here. Submit one application, and we will consider you across the Infrastructure organization.
Key Responsibilities
- Own cross-cutting infrastructure problems that span compute, storage, networking, data, deployment, and reliability, including eliminating bottlenecks across retrieval and serving paths, building shared abstractions across deployment environments, and resolving failure modes that cross platform boundaries.
- Design, build, and operate distributed infrastructure supporting Perplexity’s consumer, AI, and enterprise workloads, owning systems from architecture through production operation.
- Identify gaps between existing platforms and build shared abstractions, automation, and tooling that make infrastructure easier and safer to use.
- Improve system performance, availability, scalability, and cost-efficiency across online request traffic and background workloads.
- Debug complex production issues across service and infrastructure boundaries, then turn the findings into durable architectural improvements.
- Set technical direction for complex infrastructure systems, lead high-impact programs across teams, and establish durable technical standards through collaboration with infrastructure, product, AI, and security partners.
Qualifications
- 4+ years of professional software engineering experience building and operating production backend, platform, or distributed systems.
- A track record of owning complex production systems end to end and delivering sustained technical impact across teams.
- Demonstrated ability to set technical direction, lead through influence, and raise the engineering bar through architecture, design reviews, and mentorship.