← Back to results

Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Backend Platform)

Join the Backend Platform team to lead the design and implementation of critical infrastructure for product reliability and performance.

Location
San Francisco
Compensation
Not disclosed
Level
mid
Type
full time

Skills & Technologies

Requirements

Experience
4+ years

Joblaze summary

In this role, the engineer will focus on designing and implementing a sandboxing platform while enhancing backend services for authentication and authorization. Key skills include strong system design capabilities and proficiency in backend languages like Python, Go, or Rust, alongside experience with modern infrastructure tools such as AWS and Kubernetes. This position is ideal for mid to senior-level professionals with a background in building production-grade backend systems and a collaborative approach to problem-solving. The team emphasizes high standards for code quality and system reliability, fostering an environment where innovation can thrive.

Quick facts

How much experience is required?
At least 4 years of relevant experience for this Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Backend Platform) role.
What's the tech stack?
Joblaze extracted these technologies from the posting: AWS, Go, Rust, Python, Kubernetes.
What seniority level is this role?
Perplexity targets mid-level candidates for this position.
Is this full-time or contract?
Full-time for this Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Backend Platform) role at Perplexity.

From the original posting

About the Role

The Backend Platform team is the backbone of Perplexity’s product reliability, scalability, and performance, enabling every product and AI team to build with confidence.

This high‑impact group builds and maintains critical infrastructure, including backend systems for authentication, authorization, real-time data flows, service orchestration, and sandboxing, to ensure fast, reliable, and secure user experiences. By setting rigorous standards for code quality, uptime and performance, the Platform team ensures everyone at Perplexity can innovate at speed on top of a robust, well-architected foundation.

Key Responsibilities

  • Lead the design and implementation of our sandboxing platform to safely execute untrusted and user‑generated code while meeting strict performance and reliability requirements.

  • Define and extend our RBAC and authorization primitives, ensuring they scale with new product capabilities and enterprise controls.

  • Own key backend services involved in authentication and encryption flows (including BYOK‑related pieces), partnering with Security and Infra on defense‑in‑depth.

  • Set the technical bar for backend platform design and operations, driving best practices in reliability, observability, and incident response for always‑on systems.

  • Partner with product and AI teams to define clear platform interfaces, SLAs, and integration patterns so new features can reliably build on shared backend capabilities.

  • Provide technical leadership across the backend platform area, mentoring other engineers and making long‑term architectural decisions that keep the foundation simple, secure, and evolvable.

Qualifications

  • Experience designing and building backend systems that run in production (typically 4+ years for mid-level, more for senior and staff).

  • Strong system design skills, with a track record of creating efficient, reliable, and scalable architectures.

  • Hands-on experience with modern infrastructure (for example AWS, Kubernetes, and related cloud technologies).

  • Strong proficiency in at least one backend language such as Python, Go, or Rust, and the ability to work effectively in a multi-language environment.

  • Collaborative mindset and eagerness to solve challenging technical problems with other experienced engineers.

  • Comfort working in security‑sensitive areas (auth, authorization, encryption) and making pragmatic trade-offs between safety, simplicity, and velocity.

If you’re excited about this role, we encourage you to apply even if your experience doesn’t match every qualification listed above.