Member of Technical Staff (Search Core, Indexing & Data Pipeline Stream)

Perplexity is looking for a highly skilled Expert Systems Engineer to join our Search Core team. For the indexing and data processing stream. This role is critical to building next-generation search products and technologies. You will help drive key decisions around the architecture, design, and implementation of foundational components in our technical stack.

Responsibilities

Design and build core search engine components, especially indexing pipelines, data storage formats that operate at the scale of billions of pages

Develop streaming and batch data processing with YT systems for search index construction in a high-load environment

Push the limits of hardware performance through low-level optimizations and systems-level tuning

Tackle challenges in multithreading, concurrency, and system-level optimization

Design and build core search engine components, including indexing pipelines, retrieval algorithms, and ranking systems that operate at the scale of billions of pages

Develop streaming and batch data processing systems for search index construction in a high-load environment

Push the limits of hardware performance through low-level optimizations and systems-level tuning

Tackle challenges in multithreading, concurrency, and system-level optimization

Qualifications

3+ years of hands-on experience in systems programming (Rust, C++, C, or similar)

Ownership of full project lifecycle — you don't just write a fast inner loop, you care about how the system is built, deployed, operated, and scaled in production

Knowledge of Python or other scripting languages

Knowledge of Data processing systems (YT/Kafka/Hadoop)

Passion for writing clean, efficient, and scalable systems-level code

Strong knowledge of algorithms and data structures, and the ability to apply them effectively

Deep understanding of multithreading, including various approaches, challenges, and trade-offs

Experience building high-load, distributed, and hardware-adjacent services

Solid understanding of Linux internals (syscalls, networking stack, memory model, kernel tuning)

Familiarity with low-level optimization techniques (memory management, cache efficiency, SIMD, profiling)

Preferred Qualifications

Experience developing core components of search engines, databases, or information retrieval systems

Understanding of search fundamentals: indexing, query parsing, ranking, and relevance

Experience with trading systems or other latency-sensitive real-time systems

Familiarity with cloud services, Kubernetes, and AWS infrastructure