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