Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Model Platform)
At a glance
Senior Software Engineering role at Perplexity. San Francisco · full-time · $220,000–$405,000 base.
techroles summary, based on the employer's posting.
What you'll do
- Run the platform that connects product and research systems to model inference, giving internal teams one fast, dependable interface
- Create core software abstractions and make consequential technical choices for a model-serving service
- Write production Rust and Python for a system handling hundreds of millions of model calls daily
- Help teams bring in new models, test them rigorously and deliver reliable products
What you bring
- At least five years building and launching large-scale services with strong reliability, uptime and performance
- You bring strong engineering judgment, with attention to developer experience and systems that can adapt as AI changes
- You are proficient in a backend language such as Python, Rust or another listed option, plus AWS and Kubernetes
- A computer science or engineering degree, a related qualification, or equivalent practical experience
Who this fits
This senior individual-contributor role suits an engineer with production systems experience and active interest in frontier-model capabilities and failure modes. The position is based in San Francisco.
From the employer
About Perplexity AI
In 2026, we launched Computer, the defining product for the new era of agentic AI. We’ve scaled beyond the millions of people using Perplexity every day for research, shopping, investing and curiosity into a new paradigm of using AI to transform knowledge into action.
As an engineer at Perplexity, your role will be to build products and systems that define how AI empowers humans to think, decide and act. You’ll ship fast and work between both product and infrastructure advancements in our technology.
Why Perplexity is different
Craftsmanship. We build high quality, tasteful products targeting both the AI native and AI curious.
Ownership. You identify the problem, design the solution and ship it.
Entrepreneurship. We think like founders, act with urgency, and hustle to deliver for each other and our users.
Scholarship. Work among highly talented peers, pursuing knowledge and truth, upleveling ourselves, our teams, and our products.
Partnership. We amplify each others' strengths, break down silos, and give selflessly to help our colleagues deliver excellence.
About the Role
Perplexity is looking for a deeply technical software engineer to own and evolve our model serving platform, which is responsible for connecting our products and research systems with our inference layers. This mission-critical system gives teams one fast, reliable interface across providers.
You will work at the intersection of distributed systems, AI products, and infrastructure. You will make it dramatically easier for teams across Perplexity to adopt new models, run rigorous experiments, and ship dependable products.
The ideal candidate combines sound technical judgment forged in production systems with active curiosity around the rapidly changing capabilities and failure modes of frontier models. You will design core abstractions, lead high-conviction technical decisions, and write production Rust and Python for a service that serves hundreds of millions of model requests per day.
Required Qualifications
5+ years of experience building and shipping large-scale systems and services with high reliability, availability, and performance.
Strong software engineering craft, with special care for developer experience and designing future-proof systems that can evolve along with a rapidly advancing AI landscape.
Proficiency with a general-purpose backend language (Python, Rust, C++, Go) and cloud infrastructure (AWS, Kubernetes).
BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, or related fields (or equivalent experience).
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Software Engineering$220k+
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