Staff Backend Engineer, Perplexity AI

API Platform

$180-300k

+ Equity

React

AWS

Kubernetes

Python

Redis

Postgres

Rust

Bazel

DynamoDB

FastAPI

DevOps

Senior and Expert level

New York

San Francisco Bay Area

Conversational AI-powered search tool

Be an early applicant

Conversational AI-powered search tool

1001+ employees

B2CArtificial IntelligenceDeep TechMachine Learning

Be an early applicant

$180-300k

+ Equity

React

AWS

Kubernetes

Python

Redis

Postgres

Rust

Bazel

DynamoDB

FastAPI

DevOps

Senior and Expert level

New York

San Francisco Bay Area

1001+ employees

B2CArtificial IntelligenceDeep TechMachine Learning

Company mission

To advance the way people discover and share information.

Job

Company

Role

Who you are

5+ years of backend engineering experience with Python, Go, or Rust
Strong understanding of high-traffic API design: versioning, schema evolution, idempotency, auth patterns, and performance tuning
Hands-on experience running AWS services, plus fluency with Kubernetes, CI/CD, and modern DevOps practices
Experience with LLM or natural-language APIs (latency tuning, streaming, model orchestration) is a strong plus
Strong customer empathy and product sense, ensuring the APIs you build are ergonomic, well-documented, and easy to adopt

What the job involves

Perplexity is redefining how people search, reason, and interact with information
Our API team sits at the core of this vision, designing and operating the high-performance interfaces that expose Perplexity’s intelligence to developers, enterprises, and products worldwide
This team owns the architecture, reliability, and security of the APIs that power everything from real-time LLM queries to enterprise-scale integrations
As a Staff Backend Engineer, you will shape the technical foundation of Perplexity’s external platform
You’ll architect distributed systems, optimize performance at scale, and set engineering standards that ensure our APIs are fast, resilient, and a delight to build on
Design, build, and operate mission-critical APIs in Python, Go, or Rust optimized for low latency, high throughput, and strong consistency
Lead major technical initiatives, from new platform components to multi-team system redesigns
Improve system reliability and security by implementing rate limiting, authentication, observability (metrics, tracing, logging), and automated testing
Collaborate across teams to determine when to extend existing systems versus build new, specialized services
Translate customer needs into scalable platform capabilities and generalized API features
Uphold engineering excellence through design reviews, code quality, and internal documentation

Our take

As AI continues to drive changes in both business operations and day-to-day lives, Perplexity AI delivers an intelligent search engine powered by conversational AI, to improve search outcomes and "unlock the power of knowledge" for all.

Reaching impressive heights of 22M monthly visits, Perplexity's "ask anything" method of search is clearly a popular one. And what sets it apart from other search engines is in its answers, which are concise and fully cited, responding to the user query rather than simply providing a place in which they can scroll to find it themselves.

The company has raised substantial funding, with contributions from former execs at companies like OpenAI, Meta, and Quora, demonstrating the interest that it has drummed up in the space. Having doubled its annual recurring revenue between 2023 and 24, this investment will allow Perplexity AI to continue building out its product, and accelerate growth into the future.

Kirsty

Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle

Insights

Top investors

Glassdoor (4.6)

Trustpilot (1.7)

Company

Funding (last 2 of 9 rounds)

Sep 2025

$200m

LATE VC

Jul 2025

$100m

LATE VC

Total funding: $1.7bn

Company HQ

Financial District, San Francisco, CA

Leadership

Aravind Srinivas

(Co-Founder, President & CEO)

Former Research Scientist at OpenAI, who has interned in Research at Google and Deep Mind. Obtained a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Denis Yarats

(Co-Founder & CTO)

Prior to co-founding Perplexity in 2022, Denis was an AI Research Scientist at Facebook AI Research, a Staff ML Engineer at Quora, and a Software Development Engineer at Microsoft.

Johnny Ho

(Co-Founder & CSO)

Previously a Quantitative Trader at Tower Research Capital, and Engineer at Quora.

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