Senior Backend Software Engineer - API Platform

AI overview

Lead the design and implementation of scalable systems that power API products using technologies like Python, Postgresql, DynamoDB, and Kubernetes.

Perplexity is an AI-powered answer engine founded in December 2022 and growing rapidly as one of the world’s leading AI platforms. Perplexity has raised over $1B in venture investment from some of the world’s most visionary and successful leaders, including Elad Gil, Daniel Gross, Jeff Bezos, Accel, IVP, NEA, NVIDIA, Samsung, and many more. Our objective is to build accurate, trustworthy AI that powers decision-making for people and assistive AI wherever decisions are being made. Throughout human history, change and innovation have always been driven by curious people. Today, curious people use Perplexity to answer more than 780 million queries every month–a number that’s growing rapidly for one simple reason: everyone can be curious. 

Perplexity is looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to join our small team revolutionizing the way people search and interact with the internet. You will be responsible for leading design, implementation, and scaling of systems that power our API products.  Our backend stack is Python, Postgresql, DynamoDB, Redis, and Kubernetes, built alongside dedicated inhouse AI and search interfaces. The ideal candidate should have experience building systems, infrastructure, scaling, testing, and maintenance.

Responsibilities

  • Design, build, expand and maintain APIs and services
  • Scope and lead large technical projects, laying the groundwork for early-stage products to iteratively evolve and scale
  • Work with engineers across the company to understand when existing infrastructure can be leveraged vs. when building a bespoke solution is prudent
  • Align our technical decisions with the company’s broad strategic initiatives, while also advocating for needs specific to emerging new API initiatives.
  • Should be able to generalize specific customer requests and build features that are applicable to the broader user base of the product

Qualifications

  • Understand good practices of building and working with natural language/LLM APIs
  • Have experience managing infrastructure for API products
  • Have a good intuition for what will last and scale
  • Have experience in ensuring great user experience and ease of use of features and products you build.
  • 4+ years of engineering experience.

Our cash compensation range for this role is $180,000 - $300,000.

Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including, experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above.
 
Equity: In addition to the base salary, equity may be part of the total compensation package.
Benefits: Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance for you and your dependents. Includes a 401(k) plan.
 
 

Perks & Benefits Extracted with AI

  • Health Insurance: Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance for you and your dependents.
  • 401(k) plan: Includes a 401(k) plan.

At Perplexity, we've experienced tremendous growth and adoption since publicly launching the world's first fully functional conversational answer engine just over a year ago. Our AI-powered search assistant has amassed 10 million monthly active users as of early 2024, with our mobile apps installed over 1 million times across iOS and Android devices. In 2023 alone, we served over 500 million queries from users around the globe. To support our rapid expansion, we've raised significant funding from some of the most respected investors in technology. In January 2024, we raised $73.6 million in a Series B round led by IVP, with participation from NVIDIA, Jeff Bezos' investment fund, NEA, Databricks, and other prominent firms. We followed that up with a $62.7 million Series B1 round in April 2024 led by Daniel Gross, valuing Perplexity at over $1 billion.Our prominent investor base includes IVP, NEA, Jeff Bezos, NVIDIA, Databricks, Bessemer Venture Partners, Elad Gil, Nat Friedman, Naval Ravikant, Tobi Lutke, and many other visionary individuals.    

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Salary
$180,000 – $300,000 per year
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