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Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Multimodal)

Perplexity· AI Products
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San Francisco$220k - $405kFull-timePosted 4mo ago

About the role

Backend software engineer role focused on building and scaling real-time voice and multimodal session infrastructure, with ownership from problem definition to deployment across distributed systems and SDK integration.

Responsibilities

  • Design, build, and scale the backend session-worker architecture that powers realtime voice: durable per-session workers, provider routing, and stateful streaming over gRPC.
  • Own distributed-systems problems end-to-end — session lifecycle, crash recovery, reconnection and replay, multi-region deployment, and graceful degradation under real production load.
  • Build provider-agnostic streaming protocols from our backend to the Rust SDK that powers voice across every client stack.
  • Drive new products and initiatives in voice and multimodal AI from problem definition through technical design, implementation, and launch.
  • Build the orchestration layer that lets live voice models delegate work to tools, agents, and long-running tasks — safely, asynchronously, and at scale.
  • Partner closely with SDK, client, infrastructure, and model teams; work across the stack when the product demands it, from backend services to client-facing APIs.

Qualifications

  • 4+ years of professional software engineering experience building backend or distributed systems.
  • Strong experience in Rust, Python, or Go (we work primarily in Rust and Python).
  • Experience designing and operating production distributed systems: streaming RPC (gRPC or similar), stateful services, message-driven architectures, and failure recovery.
  • Solid understanding of cloud infrastructure — deploying, scaling, and operating services on AWS or equivalent.
  • Strong product judgment and the ability to translate user problems into simple, effective technical solutions.
  • Genuine interest and adoption of AI products and willingness to learn quickly.

Skills

Required:Distributed systems designRustPythongRPC
Nice to have:Go

Benefits

  • Full-time U.S. employees enjoy a comprehensive benefits program including equity, health, dental, vision, retirement, fitness, commuter and dependent care accounts, and more.
  • International Benefits: Full-time employees outside the U.S. enjoy a comprehensive benefits program tailored to their region of residence.
Last updated Aug 19, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Perplexity

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