Senior C++ Developer – Search Core

Perplexity is looking for a highly skilled Senior or Expert C++ Developer to join our Search Core team. This role is critical to building next-generation search products and technologies. You will help drive key decisions around the architecture, design, and implementation of foundational components in our technical stack.

Responsibilities

• Develop new types of search index storage, including streaming and batch data processing systems in a high-load environment capable of handling billions of pages
• Build new core search components, including algorithms for efficient retrieval and ranking
• Push the limits of hardware performance
• Tackle challenges in multithreading, concurrency, and system-level optimization
• Optimize subsystems for reliable and consistent data replication within the core search stack

Qualifications  

• 5+ years of hands-on experience in C++ development
• Knowledge of Python or other scripting languages
• Passion for writing clean, efficient, and scalable C++ code
• Strong knowledge of algorithms and data structures, and the ability to apply them effectively
• Deep understanding of multithreading, including various approaches, challenges, and trade-offs
• Experience building high-load, distributed, and hardware-adjacent services
• Expertise in real-time systems development

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience developing core components of search engines, trading systems, or database systems
• Familiarity with cloud services, Kubernetes (k8s), and AWS infrastructure

At Perplexity, we've experienced tremendous growth and adoption since publicly launching the world's first fully functional conversational answer engine just over a year ago. Our AI-powered search assistant has amassed 10 million monthly active users as of early 2024, with our mobile apps installed over 1 million times across iOS and Android devices. In 2023 alone, we served over 500 million queries from users around the globe.

To support our rapid expansion, we've raised significant funding from some of the most respected investors in technology. In January 2024, we raised $73.6 million in a Series B round led by IVP, with participation from NVIDIA, Jeff Bezos' investment fund, NEA, Databricks, and other prominent firms. We followed that up with a $62.7 million Series B1 round in April 2024 led by Daniel Gross, valuing Perplexity at over $1 billion.

Our prominent investor base includes IVP, NEA, Jeff Bezos, NVIDIA, Databricks, Bessemer Venture Partners, Elad Gil, Nat Friedman, Naval Ravikant, Tobi Lutke, and many other visionary individuals.