Perplexity is seeking a Staff Authentication & Identity Engineer to join our innovative team revolutionizing internet search and interaction. You’ll tackle distributed, high-scale challenges while ensuring seamless user experiences for millions of daily queries. Your work will directly support our mission to revolutionize secure, scalable access management for enterprise customers and individual users alike.
Responsibilities
- Design and build robust authentication systems for Next.js-based web applications, ensuring low-latency performance at scale.
- Architect secure, modern authentication flows using OAuth 2.0, JWT, and passwordless/email providers.
- Collaborate cross-functionally with frontend, backend, security, and mobile teams to unify authentication across platforms.
- Evolve access control systems, including role-based permissions and ACLs for customer-specific resource management.
- Optimize authentication performance and reliability while maintaining strict security standards.
- Own critical components of our authentication stack, from prototyping to production deployment.
Qualifications
- 7+ years of web development experience, including 3+ years building authentication systems.
- Expertise in JavaScript/TypeScript, React, Next.js, and NextAuth.js.
- Deep knowledge of OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, and modern security protocols.
- Experience designing high-scale architectures (100k+ requests/sec) with cloud platforms like AWS.
- Proficiency with relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL) for auth-related data.
- Strong problem-solving skills and commitment to code simplicity/performance.
Qualifications
- Experience with distributed systems or Go/Python backend development.
- Familiarity with enterprise auth standards (SSO, SCIM, SAML).
- Background in role-based access control (RBAC) for large user bases.
- Mobile authentication implementation experience.
Our cash compensation range for this role is $250,000 - $300,000.
At Perplexity, we've experienced tremendous growth and adoption since publicly launching the world's first fully functional conversational answer engine in 2022. We've grown from answering 2.5 million questions per day at the start of 2024 to around 20 million daily queries in December 2024. We also offer Perplexity Enterprise Pro, which counts leading companies like Nvidia, the Cleveland Cavaliers, Bridgewater, and Zoom as customers.
To support our rapid expansion, we've raised significant funding from some of the most respected technology investors. Our investor base includes IVP, NEA, Jeff Bezos, NVIDIA, Databricks, Bessemer Venture Partners, Elad Gil, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, Naval Ravikant, Tobi Lutke, and many other visionary individuals. In 2024, our employee base grew nearly 300%, and we're just getting started.
Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including, experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above.
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.
