Perplexity
Member of Technical Staff (Search Core, Indexing & Data Pipeline Stream)
Belgrade, US
Role snapshot
Perplexity is hiring a Member of Technical Staff (Search Core, Indexing & Data Pipeline Stream) on a full-time basis. This is a role based in Belgrade, US. The listing highlights Search.
- Company
- Perplexity
- Location
- Belgrade, US
- Job type
- Full-time
- Experience
- 3+ years
- Posted
- Oct 2, 2026
Who this role suits
Practitioners with a few years behind them who can work independently, make trade-offs and help newer teammates.
How to prepare your application
- Check your résumé against the listed skills (Search) and give each one a concrete example: what you built or achieved, not just that you used it.
- Prepare examples of decisions you drove, how you measured the result, and how you worked with other teams.
- Be ready to discuss trade-offs and scope, not only the tools you have used.
- Read what Perplexity publishes about its product or team, so you can say clearly why this role and this company.
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About the role
Perplexity is looking for a highly skilled Expert Systems Engineer to join our Search Core team. For the indexing and data processing stream. This role is critical to building next-generation search products and technologies.
Responsibilities
Design and build core search engine components, especially indexing pipelines, data storage formats that operate at the scale of billions of pages
Develop streaming and batch data processing with YT systems for search index construction in a high-load environment
Push the limits of hardware performance through low-level optimizations and systems-level tuning
Tackle challenges in multithreading, concurrency, and system-level optimization
Design and build core search engine components, including indexing pipelines, retrieval algorithms, and ranking systems that operate at the scale of billions of pages
Develop streaming and batch data processing systems for search index construction in a high-load environment
Push the limits of hardware performance through low-level optimizations and systems-level tuning
Tackle 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 production
Knowledge of Python or other scripting languages
Knowledge of Data processing systems (YT/Kafka/Hadoop)
Passion for writing clean, efficient, and scalable systems-level code
Strong knowledge of algorithms and data structures, and the ability to apply them effectively
Deep understanding of multithreading, including various approaches, challenges, and trade-offs
Experience building high-load, distributed, and hardware-adjacent services
Solid understanding of Linux internals (syscalls, networking stack, memory model, kernel tuning)
Familiarity with low-level optimization techniques (memory management, cache efficiency, SIMD, profiling)
Nice to have
Experience developing core components of search engines, databases, or information retrieval systems
Understanding of search fundamentals: indexing, query parsing, ranking, and relevance
Experience with trading systems or other latency-sensitive real-time systems
Familiarity with cloud services, Kubernetes, and AWS infrastructure