Backend Software Engineer

David AI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 165,000 - 225,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Unlimited PTO

Top-notch health, dental, and vision

FSA & HSA access

401k access

Meals 2x daily through DoorDash

Barry's classes

Job summary

David AI, the world’s first audio data research company, seeks a Backend Engineer to design scalable systems handling terabytes of audio data daily and to build APIs powering thousands of users.

You will collaborate with researchers and Operations to deploy robust backend infrastructure, iterate on data collection, and apply ML/DSP solutions to improve data insights. This is a fast-paced role in SF with ambitious growth.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of backend engineering experience.
• Experience designing scalable systems, APIs, and data pipelines.
• Track record delivering engineering solutions with customer value.
• Able to thrive in a fast-paced environment with meticulous execution.
• Building robust, reliable production-era infrastructure.

Responsibilities

• Design and build scalable backend systems and core data processing pipelines deriving insights from terabytes of audio data daily.
• Architect and maintain APIs and services powering features used by thousands of users.
• Build, deploy, and evaluate ML and DSP-based solutions to enhance data understanding for customers.
• Iterate with researchers and Operations to deploy backend infra supporting new data collection.
• Stay updated with cutting-edge technologies and apply them across backend, data, ML, and signal processing.

Skills

Backend engineering

Scalable systems

APIs

Data pipelines

Customer impact

High-pace environment

Production-grade infra

Eager to learn

Tools

Node.js

PostgreSQL

AWS

TypeScript

WebRTC

FFmpeg

Job description

About David AI

David AI is the first audio data research company. We bring an R&D approach to data–developing datasets with the same rigor AI labs bring to models. Our mission is to bring AI into the real world, and we believe audio is the gateway. Speech is versatile, accessible, and human—it fits naturally into everyday life. As audio AI advances and new use cases emerge, high-quality training data is the bottleneck. This is where David AI comes in.

About David AI

David AI is the first audio data research company. We bring an R&D approach to data–developing datasets with the same rigor AI labs bring to models. Our mission is to bring AI into the real world, and we believe audio is the gateway. Speech is versatile, accessible, and human—it fits naturally into everyday life. As audio AI advances and new use cases emerge, high-quality training data is the bottleneck. This is where David AI comes in.

David AI was founded in 2024 by a team of former Scale AI engineers and operators. In less than a year, we've brought on most FAANG companies and AI labs as customers. We recently raised a $50M Series B from Meritech, NVIDIA, Jack Altman (Alt Capital), Amplify Partners, First Round Capital and other Tier 1 investors.

Our team is sharp, humble, ambitious, and tight-knit. We're looking for the best research, engineering, product, and operations minds to join us on our mission to push the frontier of audio AI.

About Our Engineering Team

At David AI, our engineers build the pipelines, platforms, and models that transform raw audio into high-signal data for leading AI labs and enterprises. We're a tight-knit team of product engineers, infrastructure specialists, and machine learning experts focused on building the world's first audio data research company.

We move fast, own our work end-to-end, and ship to production daily. Our team designs real-time pipelines handling terabytes of speech data and deploys cutting-edge generative audio models.

About This Role

As a Backend Engineer at David AI, you'll build the systems and infrastructure that power how our users process and make sense of the audio data they'll use to train their models, working closely with researchers to consistently iterate on how to best collect our data.

In this role, you will

• Design and build scalable backend systems and core data processing pipelines that derive actionable insights from terabytes of audio data every day.
• Architect and maintain the APIs and services that power features thousands of users interact with daily.
• Build, deploy, and evaluate LLM and DSP based solutions to increase our customers' understanding of nuanced features across our datasets.
• Iterate rapidly on our research hypotheses by working closely with researchers and our Operations team to deploy backend infrastructure that supports new data collection.
• Stay up-to-date with cutting edge technologies and frameworks to apply to our current product offering across backend engineering, data engineering, machine learning, and signal processing.

Your background looks like

• 2+ years of backend engineering experience.
• Strong backend fundamentals with experience designing scalable systems, APIs, and data pipelines that handle significant scale and volume.
• A proven track record of delivering engineering solutions that contributed value to customers.
• Experience working in a high-pace environment where constant progress was enabled by detail-oriented execution.
• Emphasis on building robust, reliable infrastructure that supports highly polished, production-grade products.
• AI/ML or audio experience is not required but you should be excited to learn.

Bonus points if you have

• Educational or professional experience with digital signal processing and a deep understanding of speech.
• Experience building and deploying ML models in a production environment.
• Led (managed or tech-led) engineering teams in high-growth environments.

Some technologies we work with

• Node.js, tRPC, PostgreSQL, AWS, Trigger.dev, WebRTC, FFmpeg, TypeScript.

Benefits

• Unlimited PTO.
• Top-notch health, dental, and vision coverage with 100% coverage for most plans.
• FSA & HSA access.
• 401k access.
• Meals 2x daily through DoorDash + snacks and beverages available at the office.
• Unlimited company-sponsored Barry's classes.

Compensation Range: $165K - $225K