Senior Java Developer - Search Core

Perplexity is an AI-powered answer engine founded in December 2022 and growing rapidly as one of the world’s leading AI platforms. Perplexity has raised over $1B in venture investment from some of the world’s most visionary and successful leaders, including Elad Gill, Daniel Gross, Jeff Bezos, Accel, IVP, NEA, Nvidia, Samsung, and many more. Our objective is to build accurate, trustworthy AI that powers decision-making for people and assistive AI wherever decisions are being made. Throughout human history, change and innovation have always been driven by curious people. Today, curious people use Perplexity to answer more than 780 million queries every month–a number that’s growing rapidly for one simple reason: everyone can be curious. 

Perplexity is looking for a highly skilled Senior or Expert Java 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

• Design and implement new core search components, including a high-load ranking service, a distributed search coordination layer, and a fast-updating master data storage system
• Build and optimize streaming and batch data processing subsystems for analytics and search index creation
• Integrate with data science solutions for search index data analysis
• Push the limits of hardware performance
• Solve challenges in JVM tuning, concurrency, and system-level performance optimization
• Optimize subsystems for reliable and consistent data replication within the core search stack

Qualifications

• 5+ years of hands-on experience in Java development
• Deep understanding of JVM internals and performance tuning
• Knowledge of Python or other scripting languages
• Passion for writing clean, efficient, and scalable Java code
• Strong knowledge of algorithms and data structures, with 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

Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including, experience and expertise.

Equity: In addition to the base salary, equity may be part of the total compensation package.

Benefits: Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance for you and your dependents. Includes a 401(k) plan.