Audio Engineer

David AI Labs, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); Sur place; USD 140 000 - 210 000; Plein temps

Résumé du poste

David AI Labs, Inc. seeks an in-house audio expert to define and uphold audio quality standards, recording specs, and QA for our data collection and studio work. You will guide contributors, vendors, and the QA team to ensure high-fidelity voice data across languages.

You will collaborate with ML researchers, write clear guidelines, and manage the studio setup, mic choices, and signal chains to meet defined targets for AI datasets.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in audio engineering, recording, or production in studio or related environments.
• Strong ear for differences across voices, mics, rooms, and signal chains.
• Deep hands-on knowledge of mics, interfaces, preamps, acoustics and room treatment.
• Proficient with DAW workflows and loudness/metering, EQ, dynamics, noise reduction, and restoration tools.

Responsabilités

• Define audio quality standards and recording specs for programs.
• Lead audio QA to diagnose and fix home/mixed recording setups.
• Write setup guides and troubleshooting docs for multilingual markets.
• Manage acoustic targets for processed or AI-generated audio and judge compliance.
• Collaborate with ML researchers to translate audio issues into actionable guidelines.

Connaissances

Audio engineering

Critical listening

DAW proficiency

Troubleshooting audio setups

Outils

iZotope RX

Python

ffmpeg

SoX

Description du poste

Individual pay is determined by factors including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.

About David AI

David AI builds and licenses high-quality voice and audio datasets to the world's leading AI labs. We're a ~50-person Series B team running data collection across ~20 language markets, spanning conversational, expressive/emotional TTS, and transcription data.

The Role

You'll be David AI's in-house audio expert. When a contributor's recordings sound off, a program needs a recording spec, or we're setting up a studio session, you're the person who knows exactly what's wrong and how to fix it. You'll set the audio standards everyone else works from, help contributors and vendors get their setups right, and run the hardware and studio side of our in-person recording work. You'll report to the Head of Operations.

What you'll do

Be the go-to audio authority for Ops, Engineering, and ML, answering the "why does this sound wrong?" questions that nobody else can

Define audio quality standards and recording specs (noise floor, clipping, reverb, levels, mic placement, sample rate/format) for each program

Help contributors diagnose and fix their home recording setups, including mic choice, placement, gain staging, room treatment, and interface/software settings

Write clear setup guides, onboarding checks, and troubleshooting docs that non-experts can follow in any of our ~20 language markets

Lead a team and calibrate them to the company's audio standards. Listen to problem batches, identify root causes (environment, hardware, settings, processing), and recommend fixes

Define acoustic targets for processed, synthetic, or AI-generated audio, and judge whether output meets them

In this role, you will:

Work with ML researchers to identify and define audio events and acoustic quality issues (What counts as “muffled” audio? How do we define “robotic artifacts”?).

Turn these definitions into actionable guidelines for our expert audio QAs to label internal audio data.

Manage the QA team in a rapid iteration loop of labeling audio samples, getting feedback from ML researchers, and refining the annotation process to deliver high-quality training and eval sets.

Conduct quality audits on annotation and post-processing models before they land in production.

What we're looking for

7+ years in audio engineering, recording, or production (studio, broadcast, podcast, post, or voice work)

A highly trained ear for subtle differences across voices, mics, rooms, and signal chains

Deep hands-on knowledge of mics, interfaces, preamps, acoustics, and room treatment

Strong DAW skills and fluency with loudness/metering, EQ, dynamics, noise reduction, and restoration tools (e.g., iZotope RX)

Ability to troubleshoot remotely and explain fixes clearly to non-technical people

Comfortable in a fast-moving startup: ambiguous problems, shifting priorities, high ownership

Nice to have

Experience with speech or voice data for AI (TTS, ASR, SFT projects) at a lab or data vendor

Experience recording voice actors or directing dialogue sessions

Experience supporting remote or distributed recording at scale

Scripting basics (Python, ffmpeg, SoX) for batch checks or processing

Visas

We sponsor international candidates across a range of visa types, including H-1B transfers, H-1B1, O-1, E-3, and TN, and we support STEM OPT. While we can’t guarantee any individual outcome, we’ve successfully sponsored teammates from all over the world.