Member of Technical Staff (Search Engine Developer, Search Core)
Join Perplexity AI as a Senior Systems Engineer to design and build core components for next-generation search technologies.
Posted by employer 1 year ago
First seen on Joblaze 1 week ago
Last verified on the company career page 1 day ago
Requirements
- Experience
- 3+ years
Not disclosed in this posting: compensation, work arrangement, visa sponsorship.
Joblaze summary
In this role, the individual will focus on designing and building essential components for a high-performance search engine, including indexing pipelines and retrieval algorithms. Proficiency in systems programming languages like Rust or C++ is crucial, along with a strong grasp of algorithms, multithreading, and system optimization. This position is ideal for experienced engineers who have a solid background in developing scalable systems and a passion for clean code. Perplexity AI's Search Core team is dedicated to pushing the boundaries of search technology, making this an exciting opportunity for those looking to make a significant impact.
Joblaze insights
- Listed 9 days ago on Joblaze — tracked directly from Perplexity AI's career page.
- Perplexity AI has 115 other open roles including Member of Technical Staff (Applied AI Engineer, Agent Capabilities), Strategic Business Operations Lead, API, Technical Customer Success Manager, API.
- 6546 active Python roles on Joblaze right now.
- 1661 active C++ roles on Joblaze right now.
- 994 active Linux roles on Joblaze right now.
- Typical Python salary we track runs $125,000–$190,800 (median $160,000, across 3240 roles). See Python salary trends
Quick facts
- How much experience is required?
- At least 3 years of relevant experience for this Member of Technical Staff (Search Engine Developer, Search Core) role.
- What's the tech stack?
- Joblaze extracted these technologies from the posting: C++, Linux, Python, Rust.
- What seniority level is this role?
- Perplexity AI targets senior candidates for this position.
- Is this full-time or contract?
- Full-time for this Member of Technical Staff (Search Engine Developer, Search Core) role at Perplexity AI.
From the original posting
Perplexity is looking for a highly skilled Senior or Expert Systems Engineer to join our Search Core team. This role is critical to building next-generation search products and technologies. You will help drive key decisions around the architecture, design, and implementation of foundational components in our technical stack.
Responsibilities
Design and build core search engine components, including indexing pipelines, retrieval algorithms, and ranking systems that operate at the scale of billions of pages
Develop streaming and batch data processing systems for search index construction in a high-load environment
Push the limits of hardware performance through low-level optimizations and systems-level tuning
Tackle challenges in multithreading, concurrency, and system-level optimization
Qualifications
3+ years of hands-on experience in systems programming (Rust, C++, C, or similar)
Ownership of full project lifecycle — you don't just write a fast inner loop, you care about how the system is built, deployed, operated, and scaled in production
Knowledge of Python or other scripting languages
Passion for writing clean, efficient, and scalable systems-level code
Strong knowledge of algorithms and data structures, and the ability to apply them effectively
Deep understanding of multithreading, including various approaches, challenges, and trade-offs
Experience building high-load, distributed, and hardware-adjacent services
Solid understanding of Linux internals (syscalls, networking stack, memory model, kernel tuning)
Familiarity with low-level optimization techniques (memory management, cache efficiency, SIMD, profiling)
Preferred Qualifications
Experience developing core components of search engines, databases, or information retrieval systems
Understanding of search fundamentals: indexing, query parsing, ranking, and relevance
Experience with trading systems or other latency-sensitive real-time systems
Familiarity with cloud services, Kubernetes, and AWS infrastructure