Staff Backend Software Engineer - API Platform | NYC, Seattle, SF jobs in United States
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Perplexity · 6 hours ago

Staff Backend Software Engineer - API Platform | NYC, Seattle, SF

positionNew York, NY
timeFull-time
remoteHybrid
senioritySenior Level, Lead/Staff
money$180K/yr - $300K/yr
date5+ years exp

Perplexity is redefining how people search, reason, and interact with information. As a Staff Backend Engineer, you will shape the technical foundation of Perplexity’s external platform by architecting distributed systems and optimizing performance at scale.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)ChatbotMachine LearningNatural Language ProcessingSearch Engine
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H1B Sponsor Likelynote

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, logging), and automated testing
Collaborate across teams to determine when to extend existing systems versus build new, specialized services
Translate customer needs into scalable platform capabilities and generalized API features
Uphold engineering excellence through design reviews, code quality, and internal documentation

Qualification

Backend engineeringAPI designAWS servicesPythonGoRustKubernetesCI/CDDevOps practicesCustomer empathyProduct senseAutomated testingObservability

Required

5+ years of backend engineering experience with Python, Go, or Rust
Strong understanding of high-traffic API design: versioning, schema evolution, idempotency, auth patterns, and performance tuning
Hands-on experience running AWS services, plus fluency with Kubernetes, CI/CD, and modern DevOps practices
Strong customer empathy and product sense, ensuring the APIs you build are ergonomic, well-documented, and easy to adopt

Preferred

Experience with LLM or natural-language APIs (latency tuning, streaming, model orchestration) is a strong plus

Company

Perplexity

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Perplexity is an AI-powered answer engine designed to provide accurate, real-time responses to user queries.
dateFounded in 2022
location
San Francisco, California, USA
people-size201-500 employees
web-link
https://www.perplexity.ai

H1B Sponsorship

Perplexity has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (10)
2024 (7)
2023 (2)

Funding

Current Stage
Late Stage
Total Funding
$1.48B
Key Investors
Cristiano RonaldoNuVenturesAccel
2025-12-05Undisclosed
2025-09-10Series Unknown· $200M
2025-08-15Secondary Market

Leadership Team

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Aravind Srinivas
Cofounder, President, CEO
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Denis Yarats
Co-Founder & CTO
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Recent News

Indian Express
The new billionaires of the AI boom
2025-12-31
The European Financial Review
Visa, Mastercard Race to Build AI Agents for Next Commerce Shift
2025-12-31
IndiaTimes
How to get access to Google’s Gemini Pro, OpenAI’s ChatGPT Go and Perplexity for free: All offers and more
2025-12-31
Company data provided by crunchbase