Member of Technical Staff (software Engineer, AI Platform)

at Perplexity · AI Frontier · San Francisco, CA · AI

Software Engineer to build AI Foundation & Platform, focusing on end-to-end AI data, evaluation, and personalization infrastructure for agent products. Responsibilities include designing scalable data pipelines, high-performance infrastructure for personalization features, and a multi-modal evaluation platform. Requires strong programming, data engineering, and distributed systems experience, with familiarity in cloud services and ML/AI engineering support.

What you'd actually do

  1. Collaborate closely with AI Product, Applied ML, Post-Training, and Data Science teams to design, build, and maintain scalable data pipelines and data lakes
  2. Develop high-performance infrastructure that powers personalization features including memory, discover, and agentic products
  3. Create a scalable, multi-modal evaluation platform for all Perplexity AI products, including personalization, pro search, labs, deep research, and Comet
  4. Design tools and abstractions on foundational infrastructure to enhance personalization, analytics, recommendations, AI products, and post-training capabilities
  5. Holistically improve engineering foundation to support rapid growth of Perplexity products and international user base.

Skills

Required

  • Strong programming and data engineering skills
  • Proficiency in open source & distributed framework (AWS, Spark, Flink, Iceberg, DynamoDB)
  • Familiarity with cloud-based data services (e.g., AWS, RDS, DynamoDB)
  • Familiarity with containerized infrastructure (e.g., EKS, Docker)
  • Familiarity with data streaming (Flink, Spark streaming, CDC)
  • Strong quantitative and engineering skills
  • Experience in estimating performance at high scale
  • Experience supporting various ML/AI engineering teams to build scalable frameworks to accelerate R&D for frontier models and AI products
  • Experience iterating on improving LLM responses
  • Experience set up proper evaluation framework or Judges to analysis performance holistically
  • 5+ years of industry experience in distributed systems or AI infrastructure

Nice to have

  • Proficiency in Pytorch
  • Proficiency in Databricks
  • Proficiency in Snowflake
  • Familiarity with LLM APIs

What the JD emphasized

  • 5+ years of industry experience in distributed systems or AI infrastructure

Other signals

  • building the next-gen AI Foundation & Platform
  • powers almost all agent products
  • scalable, personalized and fast answers for millions of people worldwide
  • multi-modal evaluation platform
  • support rapid growth of Perplexity products
Read full job description

Perplexity is seeking an experienced Software Engineer focusing on building the next-gen AI Foundation & Platform to help revolutionize the way people search and interact online. In this role, you'll help build Perplexity’s end-to-end AI data, evaluation and personalization infrastructure and flywheel which powers almost all agent products.

Tech Stack: Spark | AWS Data Stack (S3, RDS, DynamoDB, Docker, EKS, Kinesis) | Pytorch | DynamoDB | Databricks | Snowflake | LLM APIs

Perplexity is rapidly scaling both in number of use cases and number of users. Perplexity’s data stack powers scalable, personalized and fast answers for millions of people worldwide.

Responsibilities

  • Collaborate closely with AI Product, Applied ML, Post-Training, and Data Science teams to design, build, and maintain scalable data pipelines and data lakes
  • Develop high-performance infrastructure that powers personalization features including memory, discover, and agentic products
  • Create a scalable, multi-modal evaluation platform for all Perplexity AI products, including personalization, pro search, labs, deep research, and Comet
  • Design tools and abstractions on foundational infrastructure to enhance personalization, analytics, recommendations, AI products, and post-training capabilities
  • Holistically improve engineering foundation to support rapid growth of Perplexity products and international user base.

Qualifications

  • Strong programming and data engineering skills, with proficiency in open source & distributed framework(AWS, Spark, Flink, Iceberg, DynamoDB)
  • Familiarity with cloud-based data services (e.g., AWS, RDS, DynamoDB), containerized infrastructure (e.g., EKS, Docker), and data streaming (Flink, Spark streaming, CDC)
  • Strong quantitative and engineering skills with experience in estimating performance at high scale
  • Experience supporting various ML/AI engineering teams to build scalable frameworks to accelerate R&D for frontier models and AI products
  • Experience iterating on improving LLM responses and set up proper evaluation framework or Judges to analysis performance holistically.
  • Self-motivated with a strong sense of ownership of systems and designs
  • 5+ years of industry experience in distributed systems or AI infrastructure