Member of Technical Staff (General Software Engineer, Infrastructure)

Perplexity; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 220,000 - 405,000; Full time

Job summary

Perplexity is seeking a seasoned infrastructure engineer to own and shape cross-cutting production systems that span compute, storage, and networking. You will design, build, and operate distributed infrastructure supporting real-time search, model serving, and enterprise workloads, guiding architectural direction and influencing multi-team efforts.

You will lead initiatives to improve performance, reliability, and cost-efficiency while mentoring others and driving standards across platforms.

Qualifications

• Own cross-cutting infrastructure problems that span compute, storage, networking, data, deployment, and reliability.
• Design, build, and operate distributed infrastructure supporting Perplexity’s consumer, AI, and enterprise workloads, from architecture to production.
• Identify gaps between existing platforms and build shared abstractions, automation, and tooling.
• Improve system performance, availability, scalability, and cost-efficiency across online and background workloads.
• Debug complex production issues across service and infrastructure boundaries and implement durable architectural improvements.
• Set technical direction for complex infrastructure systems and lead high-impact programs across teams.

Responsibilities

• Own cross-cutting infrastructure problems that span compute, storage, networking, data, deployment, and reliability across platforms.
• Design, build, and operate distributed infrastructure supporting Perplexity’s workloads from architecture through production operation.
• Identify gaps between platforms and build shared abstractions, automation, and tooling for easier, safer use.
• Improve performance, availability, scalability, and cost-efficiency for online traffic and background jobs.
• Debug production incidents and translate findings into durable architectural improvements.
• Set technical direction for complex systems and lead programs across infrastructure, product, AI, and security teams.

Skills

Python

Go

Rust

C++

Java

System design

Mentorship / leadership

Distributed systems

Tools

Kubernetes

Terraform

Cloud platforms

Databases

Job description

About The Role

The Infrastructure team builds and operates the foundational systems behind Perplexity’s products. At Perplexity, infrastructure sits on the critical path of every answer, supporting real-time search, retrieval, model serving, and agent workloads where latency, reliability, and rapid iteration directly shape the user experience. This role is for strong infrastructure engineers whose experience spans multiple domains and who are energized by cross-cutting problems that do not fit neatly within a single platform team.

About The Role

The Infrastructure team builds and operates the foundational systems behind Perplexity’s products. At Perplexity, infrastructure sits on the critical path of every answer, supporting real-time search, retrieval, model serving, and agent workloads where latency, reliability, and rapid iteration directly shape the user experience. This role is for strong infrastructure engineers whose experience spans multiple domains and who are energized by cross-cutting problems that do not fit neatly within a single platform team.

You do not need to be a specialist in every area. Scope ranges from owning major production systems to setting technical direction across teams, leading complex infrastructure programs, and shaping infrastructure strategy across the organization.

Key Responsibilities

• Own cross-cutting infrastructure problems that span compute, storage, networking, data, deployment, and reliability, including eliminating bottlenecks across retrieval and serving paths, building shared abstractions across deployment environments, and resolving failure modes that cross platform boundaries.
• Design, build, and operate distributed infrastructure supporting Perplexity’s consumer, AI, and enterprise workloads, owning systems from architecture through production operation.
• Identify gaps between existing platforms and build shared abstractions, automation, and tooling that make infrastructure easier and safer to use.
• Improve system performance, availability, scalability, and cost-efficiency across online request traffic and background workloads.
• Debug complex production issues across service and infrastructure boundaries, then turn the findings into durable architectural improvements.
• Set technical direction for complex infrastructure systems, lead high-impact programs across teams, and establish durable technical standards through collaboration with infrastructure, product, AI, and security partners.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience building and operating production backend, platform, or distributed systems.
• A track record of owning complex production systems end to end and delivering sustained technical impact across teams.
• Demonstrated ability to set technical direction, lead through influence, and raise the engineering bar through architecture, design reviews, and mentorship.
• Strong software engineering skills in Python or other systems or backend languages such as Go, Rust, C++, or Java.
• Meaningful experience across at least two infrastructure domains, such as cloud platforms, distributed systems, Kubernetes, storage, databases, networking, data systems, developer infrastructure, or production reliability.
• Ability to develop depth quickly in unfamiliar systems, reason across software and infrastructure layers, and drive production incidents from diagnosis through durable resolution.

Compensation Range: $220K - $405K