Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Data Platform) at Perplexity (San Francisco, CA)
Perplexity· San Francisco, CA· $220k–$405k·
Role details
Equity
Perplexity at a glance
AI-powered answer engine that returns real-time, cited answers, now expanding into an agentic browser and on-device agents.
Perplexity runs an AI answer engine that searches the live web and returns direct, cited answers instead of a page of links. It has extended that core into an AI browser (Comet), an on-device agent (Computer), a developer API, and vertical tools like patent search.
$1.7B raised · latest: Series E extension · $200M · 2025 (reported $20B valuation) · backed by Accel, IVP, NEA, SoftBank Vision Fund 2
Summary
Shape the architecture and long-term technical direction of Perplexity’s data ecosystem. Design large-scale batch and streaming pipelines, build self-serve data platforms, and mentor engineers to drive the company's data lifecycle.
Job description
ABOUT THE ROLE
The Data Platform team owns the end-to-end data lifecycle at Perplexity, from ingestion through processing, storage, and serving, powering product features, analytics, experimentation, AI workloads, and the company’s data lake.
The team defines the architecture for batch and streaming systems, the orchestration and observability stack, and a self-serve data platform, while thoughtfully combining platforms such as Databricks and Snowflake with open-source technologies including Spark, Kafka, Flink, Airflow, Dagster, dbt, Iceberg, Delta Lake, and ClickHouse.
In this senior/staff role, you will shape architecture, set standards, and drive the long-term technical direction of Perplexity’s data ecosystem.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
- Design and operate large-scale batch and streaming data pipelines that directly power Perplexity product features, AI training and evaluation workflows, analytics, and experimentation.
- Build event-driven and streaming systems (Kafka, Kinesis, PubSub, or similar) for real-time ingestion, transformation, and delivery, alongside batch frameworks for backfills, aggregations, and offline computation.
- Lead the architecture of data orchestration using tools like Airflow or Dagster, owning scheduling, dependency management, retries, SLAs, and end-to-end observability for critical data flows.
- Set and enforce guarantees for data correctness, freshness, lineage, and recoverability, designing systems that handle rapid scale growth, partial failures, and evolving schemas without disrupting AI workloads or product experiences.
- Build self-serve data platforms that let engineers, data scientists, and analysts safely discover data, define contracts, and create and operate their own pipelines with minimal friction.
- Improve developer experience through better abstractions, opinionated paved paths, and standards for data modeling, testing, validation, and deployment, treating the data platform as a product used by many teams.
- Drive architectural decisions across storage, compute, orchestration, and data APIs, partnering closely with product engineering and data science to align the data ecosystem with Perplexity’s roadmap.
- Mentor engineers, review designs, and raise the technical bar for data infrastructure through thoughtful feedback, documentation, and hands-on collaboration.
QUALIFICATIONS
- 5+ years (Senior) or 8+ years (Staff) of software engineering experience.
- Strong experience building production data infrastructure systems.
- Hands-on experience with batch and/or streaming data processing at scale.
- Deep familiarity with data orchestration systems (Airflow, Dagster, or similar).
- Proficiency in Python and at least one additional backend language (Go, TypeScript, etc.).
- Strong systems thinking around reliability, latency, cost, and complexity tradeoffs.
- Experience supporting ML/AI workflows, training pipelines, or evaluation systems.
- Familiarity with data quality, lineage, observability, and governance tooling.
- Prior ownership of internal platforms used by many teams.
If you’re excited about this role, we encourage you to apply even if your experience doesn’t match every qualification listed above.
Why work at Perplexity
- Culture & Environment: “Thoughtful support” culture with emphasis on craftsmanship, ownership, entrepreneurship, scholarship, and partnership. Hybrid schedule (4 days in-office) based on location.
- Perks: Daily catered meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner in office), office snacks, ride home program, commuter benefits, home office reimbursement, fitness classes, gym memberships.
- Compensation & Benefits: Competitive salary and equity packages; retirement plans with company match; flexible PTO; holiday shutdown between Christmas and New Year; 12 weeks paid bonding leave; comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance.
- Relocation & Visa Support: Relocation assistance and visa/green card sponsorship for eligible roles. Partners with immigration firm to support the process.
- Engineering Excellence: “Technical assessment for relevant roles”; values hands-on contribution, broad skill sets, and merit-based evaluation. Frequent Tech Talks and exposure to greenfield AI research problems.