Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Backend Platform)
Job Description
About the Role
The Backend Platform team is the backbone of Perplexity’s product reliability, scalability, and performance, enabling every product and AI team to build with confidence.
This high‑impact group builds and maintains critical infrastructure, including backend systems for authentication, authorization, real-time data flows, service orchestration, and sandboxing, to ensure fast, reliable, and secure user experiences. By setting rigorous standards for code quality, uptime and performance, the Platform team ensures everyone at Perplexity can innovate at speed on top of a robust, well-architected foundation.
Key Responsibilities
Lead the design and implementation of our sandboxing platform to safely execute untrusted and user‑generated code while meeting strict performance and reliability requirements.
Define and extend our RBAC and authorization primitives, ensuring they scale with new product capabilities and enterprise controls.
Own key backend services involved in authentication and encryption flows (including BYOK‑related pieces), partnering with Security and Infra on defense‑in‑depth.
Set the technical bar for backend platform design and operations, driving best practices in reliability, observability, and incident response for always‑on systems.
Partner with product and AI teams to define clear platform interfaces, SLAs, and integration patterns so new features can reliably build on shared backend capabilities.
Provide technical leadership across the backend platform area, mentoring other engineers and making long‑term architectural decisions that keep the foundation simple, secure, and evolvable.
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 creating efficient, reliable, and scalable architectures.
Hands-on experience with modern infrastructure (for example AWS, Kubernetes, and related cloud technologies).
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.
Collaborative mindset and eagerness to solve challenging technical problems with other experienced engineers.
Comfort working in security‑sensitive areas (auth, authorization, encryption) and making pragmatic trade-offs between safety, simplicity, and velocity.
If you’re excited about this role, we encourage you to apply even if your experience doesn’t match every qualification listed above.
Required Skills
Categories
Frequently asked questions
Is the Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Backend Platform) position at Perplexity remote?
The Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Backend Platform) role at Perplexity is an on-site or hybrid position.
What type of employment is the Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Backend Platform) role?
Perplexity is hiring for a full-time Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Backend Platform) position.
What skills are needed for the Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Backend Platform) job at Perplexity?
Key skills for this role include Python, Kubernetes, AWS, Go, Rust.
How do I apply for the Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Backend Platform) position at Perplexity?
You can apply for the Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Backend Platform) role directly through Perplexity's official application link provided on this page.
Similar AI jobs
Staff Backend Engineer, Agents
Synthesia · fulltime
Internship - Search Backend Infra Engineer
Perplexity · fulltime
Strategic Delivery Lead, Cyber
OpenAI · fulltime
Senior/Staff Applied AI Engineer, Devops/SRE
Mistral AI · fulltime
Senior Enterprise Technology Administrator, GTM Systems
Crusoe · fulltime
Senior/Staff Software Engineer, Search & Retrieval Infrastructure
Pinecone · fulltime