Member of Technical Staff (Rust Engineer, Search)
Perplexity·London, England, United Kingdom | Belgrade, Serbia | Berlin, Berlin, Germany·posted 297d ago · last seen 25m 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
Perplexity AI is seeking a talented Search Rust Engineer to join our rapidly growing team, driving innovation in AI-powered search experiences. As a Search Rust Engineer, your main mission will be to relentlessly optimize performance - squeezing every millisecond of latency from our search stack, while implementing robust, scalable, and reliable systems.
Responsibilities:
Architect, build, and optimize ultra-low-latency search infrastructure using Rust
Profile and instrument services, continuously driving down response times at scale
Develop and maintain distributed backend components powering real-time search and retrieval
Collaborate closely with product and infrastructure teams to design systems that deliver best-in-class query performance
Apply advanced concurrency, memory management, and network programming patterns for maximum throughput
Monitor, debug, and tune production workloads to ensure reliability under demanding traffic
Contribute to code reviews and mentor peers in high-efficiency Rust development
Requirements:
Deep expertise in Rust programming, especially for backend/search systems
Experience profiling and tuning high-load, low-latency distributed services
Strong understanding of systems design, Linux internals, and performance debugging
Background in cloud infrastructure - preferably AWS - and container orchestration
Track record of driving efficiency for search or data-intensive products
Ability to thrive in fast-paced environments and own critical product code
Passion for benchmarking, instrumentation, and continuous performance improvement
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