Backend Software Engineer

Perplexity is looking for an experienced 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 backend systems that power web, mobile, and browser products.

Tech Stack: Python | PostgreSQL | DynamoDB | Redis | FastAPI

TEAMS HIRING

ENTERPRISE

The Enterprise Team at Perplexity designs and builds core platform features like rich file attachments, secure file and app connectors (using cutting-edge Model Context Protocol), and Spaces for streamlined collaboration—capabilities widely used by both enterprise and regular users. The team owns uniquely challenging domains at the intersection of AI, automation, and knowledge management, directly shaping how millions of people work with private data, files, and productivity apps across Perplexity. Their small, expert group operates with high autonomy, developing systems that set industry standards and deliver massive, visible product impact.

GROWTH

The Growth team shapes how millions of people experience Perplexity. We rapidly experiment and launch new ideas across all user-facing surfaces at Perplexity including onboarding, verticals like Students, and premium Max Tier. We build AI-powered features such as personalized prompts, auto-generated study guides, and contextual upsell nudges, driving user activation, retention, and revenue across all platforms. We own Perplexity’s growth platform, including experimentation framework, feature flagging, and notifications, to mobilize impactful feature development across the company. Engineers have outsized impact, building both the product and the platform that power our company’s growth.

COMMERCE

The Commerce team owns the full commerce stack: payments infrastructure, agentic commerce capabilities, and emerging monetization opportunities as we explore what's possible. The team builds and scales billing infrastructure across consumer subscriptions, enterprise plans, API usage (Sonar), and premium features. We also develop and maintain secure, scalable systems—including agentic payments that autonomously interact with payment platforms—ensuring reliable financial transactions for millions of users worldwide. By shaping both user experience and revenue infrastructure, the Commerce team sits at the core of Perplexity’s growth and sustainability.

CORE EXPERIENCE

The Core Experience team designs and builds the refined human‑machine interface at the heart of Perplexity: the core asking experience across web, mobile, and Comet. We own the cross-platform foundations that make querying feel effortless—expressive UX patterns, tight frontend interactions, and clear information hierarchy—while maintaining the clean abstractions and performant APIs that client platform teams rely on. This team is engineering-led and highly technical, working closely with platform owners to solve hard cross-cutting problems and uphold uncompromising standards for design, architecture, and craft. We obsess over core quality—latency, reliability, and extensibility—so Perplexity stays fast, consistent, and scalable as LLMs and agents evolve.

RESPONSIBILITIES

- Build scalable systems that ingest and process data from the web, files, and other sources.

- Optimize interfaces that interact with databases and caching systems.

- Collaborate with PMs, frontend engineers, and other stakeholders to understand product requirements.

- Work closely with AI, Search, and Data Science teams to iterate on non-deterministic systems.

- Manage a complex orchestration system with many moving parts and interfaces.

- Scale, optimize, and load balance multiple services with rapidly changing needs.

QUALIFICATIONS

- Strong experience with Python

- Strong experience with databases and caching

- Experience with AWS cloud infrastructure at scale

- Experience working with high-scale data and non-deterministic systems like LLMs

- 4+ years of engineering experience