Senior Staff Web Platform Engineer

Perplexity AI, Inc.

Job Overview

Location

Remote

Job Type

Full-time

Full Job Description

📋 Description

• Join Perplexity AI, a rapidly growing company on a mission to build the world's best answer engine and AI-native browser, making information discovery and comprehension effortless for everyone. We are a dynamic team of researchers, engineers, designers, and business leaders dedicated to creating safe, reliable, and delightful AI products used by millions globally.
• Perplexity is seeking experienced Senior Staff Web Platform Engineers to establish and lead a new, critical Web Platform team. This team will be the backbone of our web-based product development infrastructure, directly impacting the core answer experience and the innovative Comet AI browser surfaces.
• As a key member of this team, you will be instrumental in building and maintaining the sophisticated systems that empower our product teams to deliver exceptionally high-quality, performant single-page web applications (SPAs). Your work will span across desktop, mobile web, and the unique Comet browser environment.
• Your responsibilities will encompass a wide range of strategic initiatives, including developing robust DevProd infrastructure for our SPAs, architecting and implementing advanced build tooling, and optimizing CI/CD pipelines for maximum efficiency and reliability.
• A significant focus will be placed on performance optimization for critical user journeys, such as search queries, answer rendering, and browsing flows, with a keen eye on reducing application response times and improving perceived latency for an unparalleled user experience.
• You will take ownership of and continuously evolve our frontend platform. This includes refining build tools, enforcing linting and type safety workflows, and enhancing our alerting and monitoring systems to guarantee fast, dependable, and consistent web experiences across all Perplexity product surfaces.
• Design and implement cutting-edge solutions for customizable user interfaces and reusable experience components that will be leveraged across both the main Perplexity platform and the Comet browser.
• Develop and enhance sophisticated frontend alerting and monitoring systems. This is crucial for ensuring the utmost reliability of our web experiences and enabling rapid incident response when issues arise.
• Build self-serve capabilities and foundational primitives. These will empower feature teams to rapidly deploy frontend components and complex flows without requiring deep, specialized platform expertise, thereby accelerating product development cycles.
• Actively support and drive developer productivity initiatives. This involves improving the overall ergonomics of web development at Perplexity, encompassing tooling, CI/CD processes, local development workflows, and comprehensive documentation.
• Contribute significantly to the upgrading and ongoing maintenance of the core web technologies that form the foundation of Perplexity s web stack, including but not limited to React, TypeScript, and various build tooling solutions.
• Foster close collaboration with product managers, designers, search engineers, infrastructure teams, and mobile engineers. Your goal will be to ensure the seamless delivery of cohesive, performant, and user-centric web experiences from conception to deployment.
• Actively participate in strategic planning and roadmap discussions. This ensures appropriate scoping, logical sequencing of work, and effective engineering resource allocation for all platform-related initiatives.
• Drive the adoption of best practices in frontend development, performance optimization, and platform engineering across the organization.
• Mentor and guide other engineers on the team and within product teams regarding platform capabilities and best practices.
• Contribute to architectural decisions that will shape the future of Perplexity s web presence and its underlying platform.
• Proactively identify and address technical debt within the web platform to maintain a healthy and scalable codebase.
• Champion a culture of continuous improvement, innovation, and technical excellence within the engineering organization.
• Ensure the security and integrity of the web platform and the data it handles.
• Contribute to the definition and implementation of a robust design system for web components.
• Evaluate and integrate new technologies and tools that can enhance the web platform's capabilities and developer experience.
• Develop strategies for progressive enhancement and graceful degradation to ensure broad accessibility and usability across diverse environments.
• Implement strategies for A/B testing and experimentation within the web platform to drive data-informed product decisions.
• Ensure compliance with relevant web standards and accessibility guidelines.
• Contribute to the technical vision and strategy for Perplexity s web platform, aligning it with the company's overall goals.
• Lead by example in code quality, testing, and documentation standards.
• Drive the evolution of our frontend architecture to support future growth and innovation.

🎯 Requirements

• 6+ years of practical experience as a software engineer with a strong, demonstrable focus on web technologies.
• Deep expertise in modern JavaScript frameworks, with a particular emphasis on React.
• Proven experience in optimizing web application performance, including hands-on work with metrics like Time To First Byte (TTFB), Time To Interactive (TTI), and overall application response speed.
• A strong technical background in frontend and/or full-stack development, ideally gained from working on high-traffic consumer or prosumer products.
• Familiarity with frontend monitoring and alerting systems (e.g., Sentry, Datadog, Grafana, OpenTelemetry-based tooling).
• A track record of successfully managing technical migrations or large-scale refactors within production web environments.
• Experience supporting developer productivity and a history of building essential tooling or abstractions that other engineers rely on daily.
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to work effectively across product, design, and multiple engineering teams.
• A history of delivering high-quality, scalable software solutions in production environments.
• Proficiency with TypeScript and strong typing systems, including experience building well-typed internal libraries and SDKs.
• Experience with frontend performance optimization techniques such as profiling, code splitting, advanced caching strategies, image optimization, and Real User Monitoring (RUM).
• Background in building developer tools or infrastructure for web teams, including scaffolding tools, CLIs, or shared CI/CD pipelines.

🏖️ Benefits

• Competitive salary and equity package.
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance.
• Generous paid time off (PTO) and holidays.
• Remote-first work environment with flexibility.
• Opportunities for professional development and continuous learning.
• Contribute to a groundbreaking AI product used by millions.

Skills & Technologies

JavaScript

TypeScript

React

Grafana

Datadog

Senior

Remote

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Perplexity AI, Inc.

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About Perplexity AI, Inc.

Perplexity AI operates an AI-powered conversational search engine that answers queries by synthesizing live web information. The platform combines large language models with real-time retrieval, citing sources for transparency. Founded in 2022, the San Francisco-based company offers free and subscription tiers, mobile apps, and browser extensions, targeting consumers and enterprises seeking accurate, verifiable answers instead of traditional link lists.

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