Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Connector Platform)

Perplexity; New York (NY); On-site; USD 220,000 - 405,000; Full time

Job summary

Perplexity is seeking an experienced backend engineer to design and run the connector runtime that hosts built-in connectors, MCP servers, and CLI tools behind a single agent-facing interface. You will extend the semantic layer, model tool discovery, and ensure robust agent loops with observability and retries.

You will define authentication and credential isolation patterns, partner with Security and Backend Platform, and lead onboarding for new connectors with measurable quality and evaluation

Qualifications

• Production backend systems experience (4+ years for mid-level)
• Strong system design skills for scalable architectures
• Proficiency in Python, Go, or Rust
• Experience with AWS and Kubernetes
• Knowledge of OAuth and authorization protocols
• Comfort with security-sensitive areas and pragmatic trade-offs
• Collaborative mindset with engineers

Responsibilities

• Own the design and implementation of the connector runtime and hosting of built-in connectors and tools
• Extend the semantic layer: tool schemas, capability metadata, and knowledge corrections
• Design tool-discovery surfaces for agents to find and call the right connector
• Ensure agent loops are robust with structured results, retries, and observability
• Define authentication, authorization, and credential isolation patterns for connectors
• Build the onboarding path for new connectors with measurable quality and eval metrics
• Set reliability and operability standards: SLAs, observability, and incident response
• Collaborate with product and AI teams to define connector interfaces and integration patterns

Skills

Backend design

System design

Backend languages: Python/Go/Rust

Security-consciousness

Collaborative problem-solving

Tools

AWS

Kubernetes

OAuth

Job description

About The Role

The Connector Platform team builds the data layer that lets Perplexity's agents reach into the world's software. This team owns the systems that turn hundreds of heterogeneous integrations (native, MCP, CLI, first-party, and third-party APIs) into one unified, reliable, well-typed surface that agents can call with confidence.

The connector platform is the core layer that forms the knowledge layer for Computer: it is how the agent discovers what tools exist, understands what each one means, decides which to call, and grounds its reasoning in real, permissioned, up-to-date enterprise data. We maintain a knowledge layer above connectors that pushes and pulls context into them, rather than letting each connector hoard org knowledge on its own, making Computer the source of truth for institutional knowledge. Models are commoditizing; grounded, actionable, permissioned access to a customer's real systems is not. When this layer is fast, accurate, and semantically rich, every agent built on top of it gets smarter; when it is weak, no amount of model quality compensates.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the design and implementation of the connector runtime, the system that registers, hosts, and executes built-in connectors, hosted MCP servers, and CLI-backed tools behind a single agent-facing interface.
• Build and extend the semantic layer: tool and entity schemas, capability metadata, relationship modeling, and the mechanisms for capturing and applying organization- and account-specific corrections and knowledge.
• Design the tool-discovery and tool-selection surfaces that agents use to find the right connector and call it correctly, optimizing for both model accuracy and context efficiency.
• Make agent loops robust: structured results, partial-failure and retry semantics, idempotency, pagination, rate-limit handling, and observability into every tool call an agent makes.
• Define authentication, authorization, and credential-isolation patterns for connectors (OAuth flows, BYOK, per-org credential boundaries), partnering with Security and Backend Platform on defense-in-depth.
• Build the connector onboarding path (schemas, fixtures, and evaluation suites) so new connectors ship with measurable quality rather than hope, and drive the eval metrics that tell us a connector actually works inside agent loops.
• Set the technical bar for connector reliability and operability: SLAs, observability, error-rate monitoring, and incident response for an always-on, high-fan-out integration surface.
• Partner with product and AI teams to define clear connector interfaces and integration patterns so new agent capabilities can reliably build on the shared platform.

Qualifications

• Experience designing and building backend systems that run in production (typically 4+ years for mid-level, more for senior and staff).
• Strong system design skills, with a track record of building efficient, reliable, and scalable architectures, ideally including API integration, gateway, or platform-style systems with many heterogeneous downstreams.
• Strong proficiency in at least one backend language such as Python, Go, or Rust, and the ability to work effectively in a multi-language environment.
• Hands‑on experience with modern infrastructure (for example AWS, Kubernetes, and related cloud technologies).
• Depth in at least one of: OAuth and authorization protocols, API/connector or MCP-server development, schema and semantic modeling, or building tooling and evaluation for LLM-based agents.
• Comfort working in security-sensitive areas (auth, authorization, credential isolation) and making pragmatic trade-offs between safety, simplicity, and velocity.
• Collaborative mindset and eagerness to solve hard, ambiguous problems alongside other experienced engineers.

If you’re excited about this role, we encourage you to apply even if your experience doesn’t match every qualification listed above.

Compensation Range: $220K - $405K