Backend Software Engineer, Perplexity AI
Mobile
$200-250k
Conversational AI-powered search tool
Be an early applicant
Conversational AI-powered search tool
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$200-250k
1001+ employees
Company mission
To advance the way people discover and share information.
Role
Who you are
- Strong experience with Python
- Strong experience with databases and caching
- Experience with AWS cloud infrastructure at scale
- Experience working with high-scale data and non-deterministic systems like LLMs
- 4+ years of engineering experience
What the job involves
- Perplexity is looking for an experienced Backend Engineer to join our small team revolutionizing the way people search and interact with the internet
- You will be responsible for leading design, implementation, and scaling of backend systems that power web, mobile, and browser products
- Tech Stack: Python | PostgreSQL | DynamoDB | Redis | FastAPI
- Build scalable systems that ingest and process data from the web, files, and other sources
- Optimize interfaces that interact with databases and caching systems
- Collaborate with PMs, frontend engineers, and other stakeholders to understand product requirements
- Work closely with AI, Search, and Data Science teams to iterate on non-deterministic systems
- Manage a complex orchestration system with many moving parts and interfaces
- Scale, optimize, and load balance multiple services with rapidly changing needs
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
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.
Salary benchmarks
We don't have enough data yet to provide salary benchmarks for this role.
Submit your salary to help other candidates with crowdsourced salary estimates.
Share this job
View 38 more jobs at Perplexity AI