San Francisco; New York City Hybrid Full-time USD 250,000 – 405,000 / year

Perplexity is hiring a Member of Technical Staff (Backend Software Engineer, API Platform)

Responsibilities

  • 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.

Requirements

  • 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.

Nice to Have

  • 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.
Required Skills
PythonGolangRustLLM
About company
Perplexity
Perplexity is a free AI-powered answer engine that provides accurate, trusted, and real-time answers to any question.
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Job Details
Department API & Developer Platform
Category backend
Posted 7 months ago