Member Of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Backend Platform)

at Perplexity AI

📍 New York City, United States
📍 Palo Alto, United States
📍 San Francisco, United States

USD 220,000-405,000 per year

MIDDLE

✅ On-site

Tech Stack
Tag name is followed by "@" symbol and proficiency level value. About proficiency levels:

1-2 — basic awareness. Minimal hands-on experience, and a rudimentary understanding of the technology's purpose;

3-6 — daily use. Comfortable and regular usage, capable of handling common tasks and challenges related to the technology;

7-9 — you are an expert, you can teach others, you know all the pitfalls and tricks;

10 — exceptional knowledge, comprehensive understanding, and adeptness in all aspects of the technology, including advanced problem-solving. Think twice before claiming or demanding such level.

AI AWS @ 3 Go @ 6 Kubernetes @ 3 Observability Python @ 6 Rust @ 6 Security @ 3 Technical Leadership

Details

The Backend Platform team supports Perplexity's product reliability, scalability, and performance, enabling product and AI teams to build on robust infrastructure. The team develops backend systems for authentication, authorization, real-time data flows, service orchestration, and sandboxing.

Responsibilities

Lead the design and implementation of a sandboxing platform for safely executing untrusted and user-generated code while meeting strict performance and reliability requirements.
Define and extend role-based access control (RBAC) and authorization primitives to support new product capabilities and enterprise controls.
Own backend services involved in authentication and encryption flows, including Bring Your Own Key (BYOK)-related components, in partnership with Security and Infrastructure teams.
Establish best practices for backend platform design and operations, including reliability, observability, and incident response for always-on systems.
Partner with product and AI teams to define platform interfaces, service-level agreements (SLAs), and integration patterns.
Provide technical leadership, mentor engineers, and make long-term architectural decisions that keep the platform simple, secure, and evolvable.

Requirements

Experience designing and building production backend systems, typically 4+ years for mid-level candidates and more for senior and staff candidates.
Strong system design skills and a track record of creating efficient, reliable, and scalable architectures.
Hands-on experience with modern infrastructure such as AWS, Kubernetes, and related cloud technologies.
Strong proficiency in at least one backend language, such as Python, Go, or Rust, with the ability to work effectively in a multilingual environment.
A collaborative mindset and eagerness to solve challenging technical problems with experienced engineers.
Comfort working in security-sensitive areas, including authentication, authorization, and encryption, while making pragmatic trade-offs between safety, simplicity, and velocity.

Benefits

Equity.
U.S. full-time employees receive benefits including health, dental, vision, retirement, fitness, commuter, and dependent care accounts.
International full-time employees receive benefits tailored to their region of residence.
USD salary ranges apply only to U.S.-based positions. Final offers are determined by factors including experience and expertise and may vary from the listed range.