Member of Technical Staff (Backend Software Engineer, Search Crawler)
Perplexity·London, England, United Kingdom | Belgrade, Serbia | Berlin, Berlin, Germany·posted 383d ago · last seen 51m agoTrack this application
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Get Started FreeAbout interviewing at Perplexity
One of the few AI startups with a fully published interview guide (perplexity.ai/hub/careers/interview-guide): online application (response within two weeks) → recruiter phone screen → a technical screen that for engineers is 'usually a standard technical programming interview' → a quickly-scheduled onsite of 4–5 interviews including a hiring-manager deep dive on past work and experience anecdotes → a final interview with a Perplexity founder or leader → decision within a week of the onsite. Coding leans Python and mixes LeetCode medium–hard with practical search-flavored tasks (ranking/filtering, concurrency, data handling); system design is AI-native (RAG pipelines, retrieval at scale, LLM serving cost/latency). Applicants are judged 'solely on merit and potential impact' and must show 'frontier knowledge and excellence in at least one area'; roles are broad by default with team matching happening during the onsite, every role — managers included — is hands-on, and building AI products isn't expected but fluency in using AI tools is required. In-person 4 days/week near an office; remote is case-by-case.
Read the full Perplexity interview process →Description
We are seeking an experienced Backend Software Engineer to join our Crawler team. In this role, you will design, develop, and operate systems that ingest, process, and manage web-scale data in support of our next generation of advanced search technologies. This is a critical, high-impact engineering position, requiring expertise across both backend and frontend components of our data acquisition stack.
Responsibilities
Take ownership of and lead projects focused on developing large-scale web crawlers, ingestion pipelines, and data processing systems.
Build, maintain, and optimize core backend and frontend components for crawler services, including storage, retrieval, and UI dashboards for data management.
Collaborate closely with Search and Infrastructure teams to ensure the reliable, high-quality ingestion and processing of billions of web pages.
Architect and implement fullstack features and scalable distributed systems that handle high-load and real-time data operations.
Rapidly iterate, experiment with novel approaches, and continuously enhance system performance, usability, and reliability.
Qualifications
Minimum of 5 years of software development experience, with strong knowledge of data structures and algorithms in at least one of the following languages: Python, C++, Rust, or Go.
Experience with large-scale web crawlers is highly desirable.
Proven experience building, deploying, and optimizing high-load, distributed, and hardware-adjacent services.
Deep understanding of cloud infrastructure, with hands-on experience in Kubernetes (K8s) and AWS.
Demonstrated passion for writing clean, efficient, and scalable systems.
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