Member of Technical Staff (Search Core, Indexing & Data Pipeline Stream)

Maven Ventures; Berlin; On-site; EUR 90,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Perplexity is seeking a highly skilled Expert Systems Engineer to join the Search Core team. You will design and build core search engine components, focusing on indexing pipelines, data storage formats, and scalable retrieval and ranking systems for billions of pages.

The role involves developing streaming and batch data processing for index construction in a high-load environment, pushing hardware performance through low-level optimizations and tackling multithreading challenges in production

Qualifications

• 3+ years of hands-on systems programming experience
• Ownership of full project lifecycle from design to production
• Proficiency in Python or similar scripting language
• Experience with data processing systems (YT/Kafka/Hadoop)
• Strong understanding of algorithms, data structures, and systems programming
• Deep knowledge of multithreading, concurrency, and optimization
• Experience building high-load, distributed services
• Solid understanding of Linux internals and memory models

Responsibilities

• Design and build core search engine components, especially indexing pipelines.
• Develop streaming and batch data processing with YT systems for index construction.
• Push hardware performance with low-level optimizations and tuning.
• Tackle multithreading, concurrency, and system-level optimization.
• Design and build retrieval and ranking systems for large-scale pages.
• Develop streaming and batch data processing systems for index construction in high-load environments.
• Optimize systems for performance and scalability.

Skills

Rust

C++

C

Full lifecycle ownership

Python

Data processing

Multithreading

Linux internals

Optimization

Job description

Perplexity is looking for a highly skilled Expert Systems Engineer to join our Search Core team. For the indexing and data processing stream. This role is critical to building next-generation search products and technologies.

Responsibilities

• Design and build core search engine components, especially indexing pipelines, data storage formats that operate at the scale of billions of pages

• Develop streaming and batch data processing with YT systems for search index construction in a high-load environment

• Push the limits of hardware performance through low-level optimizations and systems-level tuning

• Tackle challenges in multithreading, concurrency, and system-level optimization

• Design and build core search engine components, including indexing pipelines, retrieval algorithms, and ranking systems that operate at the scale of billions of pages

• Develop streaming and batch data processing systems for search index construction in a high-load environment

• Push the limits of hardware performance through low-level optimizations and systems-level tuning

• Tackle challenges in multithreading, concurrency, and system-level optimization

Qualifications

• 3+ years of hands-on experience in systems programming (Rust, C++, C, or similar)

• Ownership of full project lifecycle you don't just write a fast inner loop, you care about how the system is built, deployed, operated, and scaled in production

• Knowledge of Python or other scripting languages

• Knowledge of Data processing systems (YT/Kafka/Hadoop)

• Passion for writing clean, efficient, and scalable systems-level code

• Strong knowledge of algorithms and data structures, and the ability to apply them effectively

• Deep understanding of multithreading, including various approaches, challenges, and trade-offs

• Experience building high-load, distributed, and hardware-adjacent services

• Solid understanding of Linux internals (syscalls, networking stack, memory model, kernel tuning)

• Familiarity with low-level optimization techniques (memory management, cache efficiency, SIMD, profiling)

Nice to have

• Experience developing core components of search engines, databases, or information retrieval systems

• Understanding of search fundamentals: indexing, query parsing, ranking, and relevance

• Experience with trading systems or other latency-sensitive real-time systems

• Familiarity with cloud services, Kubernetes, and AWS infrastructure