---
title: 'Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Storage Platform) at Perplexity'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-software-engineer-storage-platform-perplexity-san-gyysd15pah59'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-06'
---

# Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Storage Platform) at Perplexity

- **Company:** [Perplexity](https://feeny.ai/companies/perplexity)
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $220k–$405k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2026-06-03
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-06
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/Perplexity/b404e73c-5aff-4151-a1a8-6593fb6ccabf/application

**Skills:** Postgres, MySQL, DynamoDB, Cassandra, Go, Rust, Python, Distributed Systems, Data Modeling, Cloud Storage Services

> Design, operate, and improve the storage platform powering Perplexity's products and AI workloads. Own reliability and performance SLOs for stateful systems, define storage abstractions, and partner with cross-functional teams to ensure data accessibility and efficiency.

## Job description

## About the Role

The Storage Platform team owns the infrastructure that powers how Perplexity persists, retrieves, and manages data across all systems, ensuring high availability, performance, and cost-efficiency for every product and AI workload.

This foundational, high-impact group is responsible for the full spectrum of storage technologies – relational databases, vector databases, custom storage implementations, and the tooling to provision, monitor, and optimize them at scale.

By building robust abstractions and operational excellence around storage, the team enables engineers across Perplexity to focus on product innovation while trusting that data is fast, reliable, and always accessible.

## KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

- Design, operate, and continuously improve the storage platform that underpins all Perplexity products and AI workloads, including relational, NoSQL, and vector databases.
- Own reliability, performance, and availability SLOs for stateful systems, driving root cause analysis and long‑term fixes for storage‑related incidents.
- Define and evolve opinionated storage abstractions, APIs, and tooling that make it simple and safe for product teams to consume storage at scale.
- Partner with AI, infra, and product teams to design data models and access patterns that meet low‑latency, high‑throughput, and cost‑efficiency requirements.
- Lead capacity planning, benchmarking, and lifecycle management for storage clusters, including scaling, migrations, and deprecations.

## QUALIFICATIONS

- 5+ years of experience building and operating large‑scale backend or infrastructure systems in production.
- Deep hands‑on experience with at least one major database technology (for example, Postgres, MySQL, DynamoDB, Cassandra) and familiarity with modern cloud storage services.
- Strong fundamentals in distributed systems, data modeling, and performance optimization for high‑throughput, low‑latency workloads.
- Proven track record of owning services end‑to‑end, including design, implementation, deployment, and on‑call.
- Proficiency in at least one programming language used for backend systems (such as Go, Rust, or Python).
- Effective communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to partner closely with product, infra, and AI teams.

If you’re excited about this role, we encourage you to apply even if your experience doesn’t match every qualification listed above.

## About Perplexity

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Perplexity builds an AI-powered answer engine that delivers accurate, real-time answers to any question, serving curious minds and professionals who demand precision and speed.
- **Entity Type**: Private (total funding $1.7B across 16 rounds)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2022
- **Founders**: Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, Andy Konwinski

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: AI-powered search and knowledge retrieval, Software Development
- **Target customers**: B2C (general users), B2B (enterprise API customers), and power users seeking reliable information
- **Mission**: “AI for people who expect more – more accuracy, more agency, more signal, less noise.”

## Products & Services
- **Perplexity AI (Free Tier)**: Real-time conversational search engine that synthesizes web results with citations, accessible via web and mobile app. *Type*: SaaS
- **Perplexity Pro**: Subscription offering enhanced features such as advanced AI models, multimodal search, and increased usage limits. *Type*: SaaS (subscription)
- **Perplexity API Platform**: Enables developers to integrate Perplexity’s search and reasoning capabilities into their own applications. *Type*: API
- **Perplexity Browser Extension**: Brings AI-powered search directly into the browser for quick answers without leaving the page. *Type*: Browser extension

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available in provided sources (prior reports indicate ~$9B valuation as of 2024, but not confirmed in this data set)
- **Key Metric**: Total funding $1.7B (16 rounds); annual revenue ~$50M (LinkedIn estimate)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not explicitly listed in provided search results; widely known investors include IVP, NEA, Jeff Bezos, and others (not sourced here)
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount grew 11.3% YoY to 1,152 employees; operates in 54 countries; LinkedIn followers grew 131.8% yearly to >1.6M; active hiring across 48+ open roles including AI Research, Engineering, and Go-to-Market teams

## Competitive Advantages
- **Real-time, cited answers**: Unlike traditional chatbots, Perplexity grounds answers in live web results with transparent sources, building trust and accuracy.
- **Multimodal and agentic capabilities**: Continuously pushes frontier research (e.g., query-aware context compression, agents for knowledge work) that differentiates from generic LLM interfaces.
- **Vertical integration from research to product**: In-house AI research team tackles open problems unique to Perplexity’s scale, enabling fast iteration on novel methods.
- **Strong brand and user base**: Rapid consumer adoption with millions of monthly active users and high engagement.

## Strategic Focus
- **Pushing the frontier of search**: Evolving from retrieval services to code generation, agents, and full autonomy in knowledge work.
- **Expanding enterprise and API revenue**: Growing B2B footprint with API platform and enterprise solutions.
- **Global hiring and office expansion**: Offices in San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York, Austin, Washington D.C., London, Berlin, and Belgrade, with “4 days in office” hybrid model.
- **Investing in AI research**: Dedicated research division (Perplexity Research) exploring reasoning, agents, and systems to redefine how people navigate the internet.

## Why Work Here
- **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.

## Sources
1. [perplexity.ai/hub/careers](https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/careers)
2. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/perplexity](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/perplexity)
3. [perplexity.ai](https://www.perplexity.ai/)
4. [linkedin.com/company/perplexity-ai](https://www.linkedin.com/company/perplexity-ai)
5. [research.perplexity.ai](https://research.perplexity.ai/)

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