PerplexityMember of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Model Platform)
Perplexity is hiring a Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Model Platform) for a remote role open to applicants in United States. It pays $220k-$405k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Perplexity.
Level's read on this job
- Builds AI ●●●● is how Level rates this software engineer role: the job is building AI systems.
- The listed pay starts 31% above the typical software engineer posting on Level.
- The posting lists this role as remote.
- Tools and skills the posting cites include Python, Rust and C.
- Level lists 131 other open roles at Perplexity.
AI in this role
Build and scale high-performance model serving platforms connecting inference layers to AI products.
About Perplexity AI
In 2026, we launched Computer, the defining product for the new era of agentic AI. We’ve scaled beyond the millions of people using Perplexity every day for research, shopping, investing and curiosity into a new paradigm of using AI to transform knowledge into action.
As an engineer at Perplexity, your role will be to build products and systems that define how AI empowers humans to think, decide and act. You’ll ship fast and work between both product and infrastructure advancements in our technology.
Why Perplexity is different
Craftsmanship. We build high quality, tasteful products targeting both the AI native and AI curious.
Ownership. You identify the problem, design the solution and ship it.
Entrepreneurship. We think like founders, act with urgency, and hustle to deliver for each other and our users.
Scholarship. Work among highly talented peers, pursuing knowledge and truth, upleveling ourselves, our teams, and our products.
Partnership. We amplify each others' strengths, break down silos, and give selflessly to help our colleagues deliver excellence.
About the Role
Perplexity is looking for a deeply technical software engineer to own and evolve our model serving platform, which is responsible for connecting our products and research systems with our inference layers. This mission-critical system gives teams one fast, reliable interface across providers.
You will work at the intersection of distributed systems, AI products, and infrastructure. You will make it dramatically easier for teams across Perplexity to adopt new models, run rigorous experiments, and ship dependable products.
The ideal candidate combines sound technical judgment forged in production systems with active curiosity around the rapidly changing capabilities and failure modes of frontier models. You will design core abstractions, lead high-conviction technical decisions, and write production Rust and Python for a service that serves hundreds of millions of model requests per day.
Required Qualifications
5+ years of experience building and shipping large-scale systems and services with high reliability, availability, and performance.
Strong software engineering craft, with special care for developer experience and designing future-proof systems that can evolve along with a rapidly advancing AI landscape.
Proficiency with a general-purpose backend language (Python, Rust, C++, Go) and cloud infrastructure (AWS, Kubernetes).
BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, or related fields (or equivalent experience).
How we rate this
Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Model Platform) at Perplexity rates 90 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Also common in software engineer jobs at this level
Pay
- This job starts at
- $220k
- Typical software engineer job
- $168k
This posting starts 31% above the typical software engineer job. See software engineer jobs
Questions you could be asked
- Tell me about a project where distributed systems was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where model serving was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where inference was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where backend engineering was part of your work. What did you do?
- Walk me through how you've used Python in your day-to-day work.
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: Distributed Systems, Model Serving, Inference, Backend Engineering, and Python. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
- Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.
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