Member of Technical Staff (Rust Engineer, Search)

Perplexity; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Perplexity AI in London is seeking a Search Rust Engineer to optimize ultra-low-latency search stacks and build scalable backend systems in Rust. You will push performance boundaries while ensuring reliability at scale.

You will collaborate with product and infrastructure teams, profile and tune services, and mentor peers in high-efficiency Rust development in a fast-paced environment.

Qualifications

• Deep expertise in Rust for backend/search systems.
• Experience profiling and tuning high-load, low-latency services.
• Strong understanding of systems design and Linux internals.
• Background in cloud infrastructure, preferably AWS, and orchestration.
• Track record of driving efficiency for data-intensive products.
• Ability to own critical product code in fast-paced environments.
• Passion for benchmarking, instrumentation, and performance improvement.

Responsibilities

• Architect, build, and optimize ultra-low-latency search infrastructure using Rust.
• Profile and instrument services, driving down response times at scale.
• Develop and maintain distributed backend components powering real-time search.
• Collaborate with product and infra teams to deliver top query performance.
• Apply advanced concurrency, memory management, and network patterns.
• Monitor, debug, and tune production workloads for reliability under heavy traffic.
• Contribute to code reviews and mentor peers in high-efficiency Rust development.

Skills

Rust backend

Profiling

Linux internals

Distributed systems

Performance tuning

Cloud/AWS

Code ownership

Tools

AWS

Job description

Perplexity AI is seeking a talented Search Rust Engineer to join our rapidly growing team, driving innovation in AI-powered search experiences. As a Search Rust Engineer, your main mission will be to relentlessly optimize performance - squeezing every millisecond of latency from our search stack, while implementing robust, scalable, and reliable systems.

Responsibilities:

• Architect, build, and optimize ultra-low-latency search infrastructure using Rust
• Profile and instrument services, continuously driving down response times at scale
• Develop and maintain distributed backend components powering real-time search and retrieval
• Collaborate closely with product and infrastructure teams to design systems that deliver best-in-class query performance
• Apply advanced concurrency, memory management, and network programming patterns for maximum throughput
• Monitor, debug, and tune production workloads to ensure reliability under demanding traffic
• Contribute to code reviews and mentor peers in high-efficiency Rust development

Requirements:

• Deep expertise in Rust programming, especially for backend/search systems
• Experience profiling and tuning high-load, low-latency distributed services
• Strong understanding of systems design, Linux internals, and performance debugging
• Background in cloud infrastructure - preferably AWS - and container orchestration
• Track record of driving efficiency for search or data-intensive products
• Ability to thrive in fast-paced environments and own critical product code
• Passion for benchmarking, instrumentation, and continuous performance improvement