Member of Technical Staff (Backend Software Engineer, API Platform)

Perplexity is redefining how people search, reason, and interact with information. Our API team sits at the core of this vision, designing and operating the high-performance interfaces that expose Perplexity’s intelligence to developers, enterprises, and products worldwide. This team owns the architecture, reliability, and security of the APIs that power everything from real-time LLM queries to enterprise-scale integrations. As a member of our API Platform engineering team, you will shape the technical foundation of Perplexity’s external platform. You’ll architect distributed systems, optimize performance at scale, and set engineering standards that ensure our APIs are fast, resilient, and a delight to build on. Tech Stack: Python | Go | PostgreSQL | DynamoDB | Redis | FastAPI | React | Bazel | GitHub | AWS Key Responsibilities Design, build, and operate mission-critical APIs in Python, Go, or Rust optimized for low latency, high throughput, and strong consistency. Lead major technical initiatives, from new platform components to multi-team system redesigns. Improve system reliability and security by implementing rate limiting, authentication, observability (metrics, tracing, loggi