Ambient Listening Engineer

DrFirst; Northern (KY); On-site; USD 140,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Discretionary bonus

Medical, dental, vision insurance

401K with company match

Job summary

DrFirst is seeking an Ambient Listening Engineer to join the Provider Solutions, eRx Retail team. You will build real-time ambient audio capture, transcription, and structured data extraction to support clinical workflows.

The role blends audio engineering, ML model integration, and production-grade software delivery. Ideal candidates have hands-on experience with ASR, NLP, and streaming pipelines, plus cloud-based deployment using Docker/Kubernetes.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Hands-on experience with real-time audio pipelines and ASR/NLP.
• Proficiency in Python, Go, or Java.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure and containerized deployment.
• Willingness to prototype and ship working software.
• Familiarity with HIPAA and security/compliance considerations.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain real-time ambient audio capture pipelines.
• Fine-tune speech-to-text, diarization, and noise suppression models.
• Build services to turn audio into structured data for downstream systems.
• Collaborate with product, clinical informatics, and design to prototype solutions.
• Own reliability, latency, and security metrics for the ambient listening pipeline.
• Participate in code reviews and on-call rotation.

Skills

Software engineering

Real-time audio pipelines

Speech-to-text

Backend development

Hands-on prototyping

Cloud infrastructure

Docker & Kubernetes

Stakeholder communication

Tools

WebRTC

gRPC

Kafka

Python

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

About DrFirst

For 25 years, DrFirst has empowered providers and patients to achieve better health through intelligent medication management. We improve healthcare workflows and help patients start and stay on therapy with end-to-end solutions that enhance prescription access, affordability, and adherence. Our solutions help 100 million patients a year and are used by more than 420,000 prescribers, 71,000 pharmacies, 270 EHRs and health information systems, and over 2,000 hospitals in the U.S. This is a great opportunity to be a part of a successful Healthcare IT company experiencing significant growth. Here you’ll get to work with some of the smartest and most interesting people around, solving unique and complex challenges in healthcare on a scale matched by few companies. If you get excited about stretching yourself in new ways, developing yourself to your fullest potential, and care about working with smart colleagues, we want to talk to you!

Position Overview

DrFirst is seeking an Ambient Listening Engineer to join our Provider Solutions, eRx Retail team. You will build the technology that lets ambient AI quietly and reliably capture, transcribe, and structure spoken conversations, whether a provider-patient encounter or another clinical interaction, so information moves seamlessly to where it is needed. You will work at the intersection of real-time audio pipelines, speech and language models, and clinical workflow, with a bias toward shipping working software and iterating quickly alongside a small, tight-knit team. This role suits a developer who excels at hands-on implementation and thrives in a close-knit, collaborative environment.

What you will work on

• Design, build, and maintain real-time and near-real-time ambient audio capture and streaming pipelines, from device and microphone input through transcription and downstream processing.
• Integrate and fine-tune speech-to-text (ASR), speaker diarization, and noise-suppression models to maximize accuracy in noisy, multi-speaker clinical environments.
• Build the services and APIs that turn raw ambient audio into structured, actionable output such as clinical notes, summaries, or discrete data elements for downstream systems.
• Partner closely with product, clinical informatics, and design to translate ambiguous workflow problems into working prototypes quickly.
• Own reliability, latency, and accuracy metrics for the ambient listening pipeline; instrument, monitor, and continuously improve them in production.
• Implement privacy- and security-conscious handling of audio and derived data, in line with HIPAA and other applicable regulatory requirements.
• Evaluate and integrate third-party and open-source speech and LLM models where they accelerate the roadmap, balancing build-vs-buy tradeoffs.
• Participate in code reviews, design discussions, and the on-call rotation for the services you own.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a track record of shipping and operating production systems end to end.
• Hands-on experience with real-time or streaming audio and data pipelines (e.g., WebRTC, gRPC streaming, Kafka, or similar).
• Practical experience with speech-to-text, NLP, or applied machine learning models, whether integrating third-party APIs (e.g., Whisper, Deepgram, Azure Speech) or fine-tuning your own.
• Strong backend engineering skills in a language such as Python, Go, or Java, and comfort working across the stack when needed.
• A demonstrated preference for hands-on building over pure architecture or process; you would rather prototype and learn than spend weeks in design docs.
• Experience working in a small, fast-moving team where roles overlap and everyone pitches in outside a narrow job description.
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and containerized deployment (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Clear written and verbal communication, and comfort collaborating directly with clinical or non-technical stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in healthcare technology, clinical documentation, or ambient/voice AI products specifically.
• Familiarity with HIPAA, SOC 2, or other healthcare and security compliance frameworks.
• Experience with LLM-based summarization or structured data extraction from unstructured text.
• Background in audio signal processing or acoustics.

Physical Requirements

• 90% Desk work
• 10% Remote travel to client sites, conferences, or internal team meetings

#LI-GF1 #LI-Remote

Benefits

• Competitive compensation, with a base salary of $140,000 - $160,000 (Exact compensation may vary based on skills and experience)
• Eligible for a Discretionary Performance-based bonus
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• 401K eligible after 3 months of employment, with 50% company match up to first 5% of salary contributed to the plan with a 3-year vesting schedule
• HSA for eligible employees enrolled in the HDHP, with a generous company contribution up to $500 for individual coverage and $1000 for family coverage per year
• 100% company paid short and long-term disability, AD&D, and group life insurance
• Accrued annual paid time off (PTO) of 18 days for the first 3 years of service, increasing thereafter and 7 paid holiday days
• Employee Assistance Program
• Continuing Education funds up to $1500 annually for eligible programs after 1 year of service
• Voluntary benefits including FSA, Hospital indemnity, Accident and Critical Illness insurances

DrFirst is committed to being a Remote-First company, creating a dynamic and flexible workplace where everyone thrives, no matter where they log in from. Check out our approach to remote work: https://drfirst.com/company/about-us/careers/.