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Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Model Platform)

Perplexity

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

Base salary $220K  to $405K

Employer-published annual base salary, USD. Advertised base range in San Francisco, CA +1 more

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  • LocationSan Francisco, CA +1 more
  • WorkplaceWorkplace not stated
  • Status at last checkSource accepting applications when checked
  • Last checked (1 h ago) · observed since
All places named
  • San Francisco, CA
  • Palo Alto, CA

About this job

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).

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 (Software Engineer, Model Platform) (this listing)$220K - $405K
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
2026-08-26
Where this pay comes from

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

USD 220,000 – 405,000 · 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.