Senior Systems Engineer, Search Core & Indexing

Perplexity; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Perplexity is seeking an Expert Systems Engineer to join our Search Core team in London, focusing on indexing and data processing at scale.

You will design and implement core search engine components, optimize for hardware performance, and tackle multithreading and system-level challenges across billions of pages.

The role demands ownership of full lifecycle from design to deployment, with strong knowledge of Linux internals, data processing stacks, and high-load distributed services.

Qualifications

• 3+ years experience in systems programming (Rust/C++/C, etc.)
• Ownership of full project lifecycle from design to deployment
• Proficiency in Python or similar scripting
• Experience with data processing systems (YT/Kafka/Hadoop)
• Passion for clean, efficient, scalable systems code
• Strong knowledge of algorithms and data structures
• Deep understanding of multithreading and concurrency
• Experience with high-load distributed services and hardware-adjacent systems
• Solid understanding of Linux internals
• Familiarity with memory management, SIMD and profiling

Responsibilities

• Design and build core search engine components, especially indexing pipelines and data storage formats at 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 for 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

Skills

Systems programming

Full lifecycle ownership

Python

Data processing

Multithreading

Linux internals

Low-level optimization

Job description

Perplexity is seeking an Expert Systems Engineer to join our Search Core team in London, focusing on indexing and data processing at scale.

You will design and implement core search engine components, optimize for hardware performance, and tackle multithreading and system-level challenges across billions of pages.

The role demands ownership of full lifecycle from design to deployment, with strong knowledge of Linux internals, data processing stacks, and high-load distributed services.