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

Perplexity; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 80,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

Perplexity is seeking an Expert Systems Engineer to join the Search Core team, focusing on indexing pipelines and data processing for billions of pages. You will push hardware performance with low-level optimizations and tackle multithreading challenges in a high-load environment.

You will design core components of the search engine, including retrieval and ranking systems, while ensuring scalable, production-ready solutions with strong emphasis on efficiency and reliability.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of hands-on systems programming (Rust, C++, or similar).
• Owns full lifecycle of a project, from design to production deployment.
• Proficient with Python or other scripting languages.
• Experience with data processing systems (YT, Kafka, Hadoop).
• Strong knowledge of algorithms and data structures; multithreading expertise.
• Linux internals and low-level optimization knowledge.

Responsibilities

• Design and build core search engine components, especially indexing pipelines and storage formats for billions of pages.
• Develop streaming and batch data processing for search index construction in a high-load environment.
• Push hardware performance through low-level optimizations and systems-level tuning.
• Tackle challenges in multithreading, concurrency, and system-level optimization.
• Design and build core retrieval and ranking components operating at scale.

Skills

Systems programming

Full lifecycle ownership

Python scripting

Data processing

Clean code

Algorithms & DS

Multithreading

High-load distributed systems

Linux internals

Low-level 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