Member of Technical Staff (Rust Engineer, Search)

Perplexity AI is seeking a talented Search Rust Engineer to join our rapidly growing team, driving innovation in AI-powered search experiences. As a Search Rust Engineer, your main mission will be to relentlessly optimize performance - squeezing every millisecond of latency from our search stack, while implementing robust, scalable, and reliable systems.

Responsibilities:

- Architect, build, and optimize ultra-low-latency search infrastructure using Rust

- Profile and instrument services, continuously driving down response times at scale

- Develop and maintain distributed backend components powering real-time search and retrieval

- Collaborate closely with product and infrastructure teams to design systems that deliver best-in-class query performance

- Apply advanced concurrency, memory management, and network programming patterns for maximum throughput

- Monitor, debug, and tune production workloads to ensure reliability under demanding traffic

- Contribute to code reviews and mentor peers in high-efficiency Rust development

Requirements:

- Deep expertise in Rust programming, especially for backend/search systems

- Experience profiling and tuning high-load, low-latency distributed services

- Strong understanding of systems design, Linux internals, and performance debugging

- Background in cloud infrastructure - preferably AWS - and container orchestration

- Track record of driving efficiency for search or data-intensive products

- Ability to thrive in fast-paced environments and own critical product code

- Passion for benchmarking, instrumentation, and continuous performance improvement