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Member of Technical Staff (AI Inference Engineer)

Perplexity

Company websiteperplexity.ai (Perplexity, opens in new tab)

Base salary $220K  to $485K

Employer-published annual base salary, USD. Advertised base range in San Francisco, CA +2 more

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  • LocationSan Francisco, CA +2 more
  • WorkplaceWorkplace not stated
  • Status at last checkSource accepting applications when checked
  • Last checked (3 h ago) · observed since
All places named
  • San Francisco, CA
  • Palo Alto, CA
  • New York City, NY

About this job

We build and run the inference engine behind every Perplexity query and deploy dozens of model architectures at scale with tight latency and cost budgets. Our stack is Rust, Python, CUDA, and CuTe DSL - and we need another engineer to join us.

What you will work on

Examples of real work the team does:

  • New models support. Support transformer-based retrieval, text-generation, and multimodal models in our inference infrastructure, from weight loading, request scheduling and KV-cache management to support in API Gateway.

  • GPU kernels migration to CuTe DSL. Port our in-house CUDA kernels to NVIDIA's CuTe DSL so they run on GB200 today and are portable to Vera Rubin racks tomorrow.

  • Rust-native serving runtime. Develop our internal Rust-based inference server to solve all Python pains and keep up with rapidly growing traffic.

  • Performance optimisation. Profile and fix bottlenecks from network ingress through continuous batching and GPU kernel interleaving.

  • Reliability and observability. Build dashboards, alerts, and automated remediation so we catch regressions before users do. Respond to and learn from production incidents.

Who we're looking for

  • Deep experience with GPU programming and performance work (CUDA, Triton, CUTLASS, or similar). Any other deep systems programming experience is a plus.

  • You understand modern LLM architectures and are able to bring them up reliably in a production environment.

  • You've built and operated production distributed systems under real load - ideally performance-critical ones.

  • Comfortable working across languages and layers: Rust for the serving runtime, Python for model code, CUDA/CuteDSL for kernels.

  • You own problems end-to-end. You can read a research paper on Monday, write a kernel on Wednesday, and debug a production incident on Friday.

  • Self-directed. You do well in fast-moving environments where the path forward isn't laid out for you.

Good if you touched any of

  • ML compilers and framework internals: PyTorch internals, torch.compile, custom operators.

  • Distributed GPU communication: NCCL, NVLink, InfiniBand, RDMA libraries, model/tensor parallelism.

  • Low-precision inference: INT8/FP8/FP4 quantization, mixed-precision serving.

  • Profiling and debugging tools: Nsight Compute/Systems, CUDA-GDB, PTX/SASS analysis.

  • Container orchestration: Kubernetes, GPU scheduling, autoscaling inference workloads.

Qualifications

  • 3+ years of professional software engineering experience with meaningful work on ML inference or high-performance systems.

  • Familiarity with at least one deep learning framework (PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow).

  • Understanding of GPU architectures (memory hierarchy, warp scheduling, tensor cores).

  • Understanding of common LLM architectures and inference optimization techniques (e.g. quantization, speculative decoding, prefill-decode disaggregation).

Source: Perplexity on Ashby · View original posting (opens in new tab)

This range next to 6 other live Perplexity roles with the nearest advertised base floor
Chart as a table
This range next to 6 other live Perplexity roles with the nearest advertised base floor
RolePublished base
Member of Technical Staff (AI Inference Engineer) (this listing)$220K - $485K
Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Computer)$220K - $405K
Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Enterprise AI Products)$220K - $405K
Member of Technical Staff (AI Infrastructure Engineer)$220K - $405K
Member of Technical Staff (AI Software Engineer, Agents)$220K - $405K
Product Marketing Manager, API$220K - $290K
Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Backend Platform)$220K - $405K

Same $100K to $400K scale as every card. All Perplexity roles · How to read the bar

Observed changes

  1. First observed on the employer's board
  2. Began meeting the published-salary criteria
Observed since
Employer-stated posting date
2026-04-13
Where this pay comes from

Location as the employer wrote it: San Francisco • Palo Alto • New York City

USD 220,000 – 485,000 · 1 YEAR · Salary

Method
Structured pay field published by the employer
Checked
Rule set
us-base-v2

The employer's job board publishes this pay as a dedicated data field. We read the field directly; no interpretation was needed.

What we verified

  • The pay figures come from the employer's own listing, quoted exactly above.
  • The pay is an annual base salary in US dollars with a minimum of at least $100,000.
  • The role was publicly listed on the employer's job board when last checked.

We do not verify what the employer will actually offer, whether the employer is still recruiting for the role, or anything beyond what the employer published. Full methodology.