Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Storage Platform)

Perplexity AI2 weeks ago

Location

San Francisco

Type

Full Time

Salary

USD 220,000 – 405,000

Level

Senior

Role

Backend Engineer

Posted

Jun 3, 2026

Full TimeSenior

The role

Summary

Perplexity AI is seeking a highly skilled Member of Technical Staff to join their Storage Platform team, responsible for designing and maintaining mission-critical infrastructure that powers data persistence, retrieval, and management across their AI-driven answer engine. The ideal candidate will be a technical expert in distributed systems and database technologies who can build robust, scalable storage solutions that enable product innovation.

What you'll do

Storage Platform Architecture: Design, develop, and maintain comprehensive storage infrastructure supporting Perplexity's AI products across relational, NoSQL, and vector database technologies.

System Reliability: Manage and optimize reliability, performance, and availability service level objectives (SLOs) for stateful systems, conducting root cause analysis and implementing long-term solutions.

Storage Abstractions: Create and evolve opinionated storage abstractions, APIs, and tooling to simplify and secure large-scale storage consumption for product teams.

Cross-Team Collaboration: Partner with AI, infrastructure, and product teams to design optimal data models and access patterns that meet performance and cost-efficiency requirements.

Capacity Management: Lead comprehensive capacity planning, benchmarking, and lifecycle management for storage clusters, including scaling, migrations, and strategic deprecations.

What we look for

Technical

Database TechnologiesExtensive experience with major database systems like Postgres, MySQL, DynamoDB, or Cassandra

Programming LanguagesProficiency in backend system languages such as Go, Rust, or Python

Distributed SystemsStrong understanding of distributed systems architecture, data modeling, and performance optimization

Education

Computer Science BackgroundBachelor's or advanced degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related technical discipline preferred

Experience

Production Systems5+ years of experience building and operating large-scale backend or infrastructure systems in production environments

End-to-End Service OwnershipProven track record of comprehensive service management including design, implementation, deployment, and on-call responsibilities

Skills

Required skills

Distributed SystemsAdvanced knowledge of distributed system design and optimization

Database ManagementExpert-level database technology and infrastructure management skills

Performance OptimizationProven ability to optimize high-throughput, low-latency systems

Nice to have

Cloud ServicesExperience with modern cloud storage services and multi-cloud architectures

AI InfrastructureUnderstanding of AI workload-specific storage and infrastructure requirements

Compensation & benefits

Salary

USD 220,000 – 405,000 (annual)

Stock options

Available

Benefits

Equity Compensation

Stock options providing potential long-term financial upside in a high-growth AI startup

Competitive Salary

Comprehensive compensation package ranging from $220K to $405K annually

Interview process

1
Initial Screening — Phone or video call with recruiter to discuss background and role fit
2
Technical Interview — Deep-dive technical assessment focusing on distributed systems, database design, and system architecture
3
System Design Challenge — Comprehensive evaluation of candidate's ability to design scalable storage infrastructure
4
Team Fit Interviews — Meetings with potential teammates to assess collaboration and communication skills
5
Final Leadership Interview — Discussion with senior technical leadership to align on long-term potential and team vision