Backend Software Engineer, Perplexity AI

Search, Crawler Team

Salary not provided

AWS

Kubernetes

Python

C++

Rust

Senior and Expert level

London

In office M-W-F

3 days a week in office

Conversational AI-powered search tool

Open for applications

Conversational AI-powered search tool

21-100 employees

B2CArtificial IntelligenceDeep TechMachine Learning

Open for applications

Salary not provided

AWS

Kubernetes

Python

C++

Rust

Senior and Expert level

London

In office M-W-F

3 days a week in office

21-100 employees

B2CArtificial IntelligenceDeep TechMachine Learning

Company mission

To advance the way people discover and share information.

Job

Company

Role

Who you are

Minimum of 5 years of software development experience, with strong knowledge of data structures and algorithms in at least one of the following languages: Python, C++, Rust, or Go
Experience with large-scale web crawlers is highly desirable
Proven experience building, deploying, and optimizing high-load, distributed, and hardware-adjacent services
Deep understanding of cloud infrastructure, with hands-on experience in Kubernetes (K8s) and AWS
Demonstrated passion for writing clean, efficient, and scalable systems

What the job involves

We are seeking an experienced Backend Software Engineer to join our Crawler team
In this role, you will design, develop, and operate systems that ingest, process, and manage web-scale data in support of our next generation of advanced search technologies
This is a critical, high-impact engineering position, requiring expertise across both backend and frontend components of our data acquisition stack
Take ownership of and lead projects focused on developing large-scale web crawlers, ingestion pipelines, and data processing systems
Build, maintain, and optimize core backend and frontend components for crawler services, including storage, retrieval, and UI dashboards for data management
Collaborate closely with Search and Infrastructure teams to ensure the reliable, high-quality ingestion and processing of billions of web pages
Architect and implement fullstack features and scalable distributed systems that handle high-load and real-time data operations
Rapidly iterate, experiment with novel approaches, and continuously enhance system performance, usability, and reliability

Salary benchmarks

Our take

As artificial intelligence 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 10 million monthly visits, Perplexity's "ask anything" method of search is clearly a popular one. 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 8 rounds)

Jul 2025

$100m

LATE VC

May 2025

$500m

LATE VC

Total funding: $1.5bn

Company benefits

Equity
Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance for you and your dependents
401(k)
Generous home-office stipend

Company HQ

Financial District, San Francisco, CA

Leadership

Aravind Srinivas

(Co-Founder & 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)

PhD Student in AI at NYU. Former AI Research Scientist at Facebook AI Research, and Staff ML Engineer at Quora.

Johnny Ho

(Co-Founder & CSO)

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

Andy Konwinski

(Co-Founder)

Co-Founder and Advisor at Databricks. Co-Founder and General Partner at CS Graduate Ventures, and Instructor at the University of California, Berkeley.

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