How much experience is required?

At least 5 years of relevant experience for this Member of Technical Staff (Backend/Infrastructure Engineer, Search) role.

What's the tech stack?

Joblaze extracted these technologies from the posting: AWS, Go, Kubernetes, Linux, Rust.

What seniority level is this role?

Perplexity AI targets staff-level candidates for this position.

Member of Technical Staff (Backend/Infrastructure Engineer, Search) at Perplexity AI

Joblaze summary

In this role, the Infrastructure Engineer at Perplexity AI focuses on enhancing the backend systems that support a high-performance search stack, ensuring low-latency and high-throughput operations. Key skills include expertise in cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, and proficiency in languages like Rust and Go, alongside a strong grasp of Linux internals and performance optimization. This position is ideal for someone with a solid background in infrastructure and software engineering, capable of managing systems from design to production. The team operates in a fast-paced environment, emphasizing ownership and innovation in their engineering practices.

Joblaze insights

Listed 10 days ago on Joblaze — tracked directly from Perplexity AI's career page.
Perplexity AI has 116 other open roles including Senior Cinematographer, Brand Studio, Strategic Business Operations Lead, API, Member of Technical Staff (Applied AI Engineer, Agent Capabilities).
2754 active AWS roles on Joblaze right now.
2601 active Kubernetes roles on Joblaze right now.
1992 active Go roles on Joblaze right now.
Typical AWS salary we track runs $136,000–$200,000 (median $170,000, across 1371 roles). See AWS salary trends

Quick facts

How much experience is required?: At least 5 years of relevant experience for this Member of Technical Staff (Backend/Infrastructure Engineer, Search) role.
What's the tech stack?: Joblaze extracted these technologies from the posting: AWS, Go, Kubernetes, Linux, Rust.
What seniority level is this role?: Perplexity AI targets staff-level candidates for this position.
Is this full-time or contract?: Full-time for this Member of Technical Staff (Backend/Infrastructure Engineer, Search) role at Perplexity AI.

From the original posting

Perplexity is looking for an Infrastructure Engineer to own and improve the backend systems behind our latency-sensitive search stack. You’ll work across high-QPS Rust and Go services, distributed retrieval systems, cloud infrastructure, observability, and deployment tooling.

This role combines infrastructure expertise with software engineering. You’ll take systems from design through production operation and use AI-native tools where they meaningfully improve engineering and operational workflows

Responsibilities

Build and operate scalable, low-latency infrastructure for search serving and retrieval.
Design and improve distributed backend systems that handle high request volumes.
Debug and optimize Linux systems, containers, networking, and production services.
Improve reliability through observability, capacity planning, performance profiling, and incident response.
Design, deploy, and operate cloud-native systems, primarily on AWS and Kubernetes.
Build internal tools and automation for development, testing, debugging, and infrastructure operations.
Improve CI/CD pipelines, release processes, and production rollout safety.
Contribute directly to product codebases across Rust, Go, and other systems languages.
Own systems end to end, from architecture and implementation to deployment and production operation.

Requirements

Strong experience with cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, and automation.
Deep understanding of Linux internals, performance analysis, and production debugging.
Experience building or operating latency-sensitive, high-throughput backend systems.
Experience with containers, orchestration, observability, and infrastructure as code.
Experience building or maintaining CI/CD systems and release tooling.
Fluency in at least one systems language, such as Rust, Go, C++, or Java.
Comfort working across infrastructure and application-level code.
Strong ownership and the ability to operate effectively in a fast-moving environment.

Nice To Have

Experience with search, retrieval, ranking, or other large-scale data-serving systems.
Experience operating Rust services in production.
Experience with AWS, Kubernetes, and modern observability systems.
Experience with profiling, capacity planning, and performance optimization.
Experience building AI-assisted developer or operational tooling.

Member of Technical Staff (Backend/Infrastructure Engineer, Search)

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