Senior Systems Engineer - Search Core

Perplexity is looking for a highly skilled Senior or Expert Systems Engineer to join our Search Core team. This role is critical to building next-generation search products and technologies. You will help drive key decisions around the architecture, design, and implementation of foundational components in our technical stack. Responsibilities Design and build core search engine components, including indexing pipelines, retrieval algorithms, and ranking systems that operate at the scale of billions of pagesDevelop streaming and batch data processing systems for search index construction in a high-load environmentPush the limits of hardware performance through low-level optimizations and systems-level tuningTackle challenges in multithreading, concurrency, and system-level optimization Qualifications 3+ years of hands-on experience in systems programming (Rust, C++, C, or similar)Ownership of full project lifecycle — you don't just write a fast inner loop, you care about how the system is built, deployed, operated, and scaled in productionKnowledge of Python or other scripting languagesPassion for writing clean, efficient, and scalable systems-level codeStrong knowledge of algorithms and data structures, and the ability to apply them effectivelyDeep understanding of multithreading, including various approaches, challenges, and trade-offsExperience building high-load, distributed, and hardware-adjacent servicesSolid understanding of Linux internals (syscalls, networking stack, memory model, kernel tuning)Familiarity with low-level optimization techniques (memory management, cache efficiency, SIMD, profiling) Preferred Qualifications Experience developing core components of search engines, databases, or information retrieval systemsUnderstanding of search fundamentals: indexing, query parsing, ranking, and relevanceExperience with trading systems or other latency-sensitive real-time systemsFamiliarity with cloud services, Kubernetes, and AWS infrastructure