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Member of Technical Staff (AI Inference Engineer)

Perplexity· AI Research & Systems
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San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York City$220k - $485k + equityFull-timePosted 11mo ago

About the role

Engineer to build and run the inference engine behind Perplexity queries, deploying multiple model architectures at scale with tight latency and cost budgets. Stack includes Rust, Python, CUDA, and CuTe DSL.

Responsibilities

  • New models support. Support transformer-based retrieval, text-generation, and multimodal models in our inference infrastructure, from weight loading, request scheduling and KV-cache management to support in API Gateway.
  • GPU kernels migration to CuTe DSL. Port our in-house CUDA kernels to NVIDIA's CuTe DSL so they run on GB200 today and are portable to Vera Rubin racks tomorrow.
  • Rust-native serving runtime. Develop our internal Rust-based inference server to solve all Python pains and keep up with rapidly growing traffic.
  • Performance optimisation. Profile and fix bottlenecks from network ingress through continuous batching and GPU kernel interleaving.
  • Reliability and observability. Build dashboards, alerts, and automated remediation so we catch regressions before users do. Respond to and learn from production incidents.

Qualifications

  • 3+ years of professional software engineering experience with meaningful work on ML inference or high-performance systems.
  • Familiarity with at least one deep learning framework (PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow).
  • Understanding of GPU architectures (memory hierarchy, warp scheduling, tensor cores).
  • Understanding of common LLM architectures and inference optimization techniques (e.g. quantization, speculative decoding, prefill-decode disaggregation).

Skills

Required:GPU programmingLLM architecturesRustPythonCUDA/CuTe DSL

Benefits

  • Full-time U.S. benefits including equity, health, dental, vision, retirement, fitness, commuter and dependent care accounts, and more.
  • International benefits tailored to region of residence.
Last updated Jul 15, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Perplexity

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