Backend Software Engineer

David AI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Unlimited PTO

Health benefits

FSA/HSA

401k

Meals via DoorDash

Barry’s workouts

Job summary

David AI in San Francisco is seeking a Backend Engineer to build scalable systems and data pipelines powering audio data for leading AI labs.

You will design APIs, deploy AI/ML‑enabled features, and collaborate with researchers to iterate on data collection and processing, while staying current with new backend technologies.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of backend engineering experience.
• Strong backend fundamentals designing scalable systems, APIs, and data pipelines.
• Proven track record delivering engineering solutions that add value to customers.
• Experience in high-paced environments with detail-oriented execution.
• Experience building robust infrastructure for production-grade products.

Responsibilities

• Design and build scalable backend systems and core data processing pipelines that derive actionable insights from terabytes of audio data daily.
• 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 customers’ understanding of nuanced features across datasets.
• Iterate rapidly on research hypotheses by working with researchers and Operations to deploy backend infrastructure that supports new data collection.
• Stay up-to-date with cutting-edge technologies to apply to our backend, data engineering, ML, and signal processing offerings.

Skills

Backend engineering

API design

Data pipelines

Scalability

Production-grade

Tools

Node.js

tRPC

PostgreSQL

AWS

Trigger.dev

WebRTC

FFmpeg

TypeScript

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.

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.