Lead Audio Engineer

OSI Engineering; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

OSI Engineering seeks an accomplished senior audio engineer to own a wearable audio system end-to-end, from distributed microphone arrays and DSP to wake-word, beamforming, spatial audio, and open-ear speaker output. The role covers multi-mic capture, on-device processing, and Class-D driven speakers for a consumer product.

You will drive microphone selection, DSP pipelines, wake-word strategies, and on-device processing, ensuring low latency and robust performance in real-world wear scenarios,

Qualifications

• 10+ years of audio engineering with at least one shipped consumer product.
• Experience owning a multi-microphone voice system end-to-end.
• Proven track record shipping wake-word or always-on voice activation at consumer scale.
• Experience designing real-time DSP pipelines on constrained MCUs, not just desktop work.
• Strong acoustic engineering instincts in microphone design and housing acoustics.
• Experience driving audio component selection and benchmarking with second-source planning.

Responsibilities

• Own the audio system end-to-end from mic arrays to wake-word and spatial output.
• Drive part selection and benchmarking across microphones, DSPs, AFEs, and Class-D amps.
• Specify interfaces and collaborate with EE and FW leads on layout and hosting.
• Drive on-device DSP development with latency budgeting and metric tuning.
• Validate DOA accuracy, noise suppression, wind robustness in wear scenarios.
• Define wake-word strategy and on-device engine deployment with user experience focus.
• Partner with product design on acoustic detailing and housing.
• Collaborate on reliability and transducer durability assessments.
• Ship the product by year-end and help grow the audio team and cloud voice processing.

Skills

Audio engineering

End-to-end ownership

Wake-word systems

Real-time DSP

MCU constraints

Acoustic engineering

Second-source planning

On-device processing

Spatial audio

Voice UX latency

Tools

MCUs

DSPs

Class-D amplifiers

Job description

You will own the wearable audio system end-to-end, from distributed microphone arrays and DSP to wake-word, beamforming, spatial audio, and open-ear speaker output. The first device includes multi-mic capture, on-device processing (AEC, noise suppression, DOA, wake-word), and Class-D–driven speakers. Audio is central to the product experience.

What You’ll Do

• Own the audio system end-to-end — microphone selection and placement, audio acquisition architecture, DSP pipeline, wake-word, beamforming, AEC, noise suppression, spatial speaker output.
• Drive part selection and benchmarking across the audio chain — microphones, audio DSPs and AFEs, Class-D amplifiers, speakers — with second-source planning.
• Specify the electrical and acoustic interfaces audio needs from the rest of the system, and partner with the EE lead on layout and the FW lead on runtime hosting.
• Drive the on-device DSP that runs in real time alongside the rest of the platform — algorithm design, latency and CPU budgets, training data, metric tuning.
• Validate the spatial mic array for direction‑of‑arrival accuracy, speech enhancement in noise, and wind robustness across realistic wear scenarios.
• Define the wake-word strategy — keyword choice, training data, on-device engine, false-accept and missed-trigger budgets — and own the experience users hit when they say it.
• Partners with the product design lead on acoustic detailing — microphone ports, mesh, wind shielding, speaker housings, leakage.
• Partner with the reliability lead on component-level reliability for the audio chain — transducer durability, sweat and humidity resistance, AFE and amplifier qualification.
• Ship the product by the end of year and help build the audio team and our cloud‑side voice processing capability.

Responsibilities

• 10+ years of audio engineering, with at least one shipped consumer product
• where you owned a multi-microphone voice system end-to-end.
• Proven track record shipping wake-word or always‑on voice activation at consumer scale, including data collection and metric tuning.
• Experience designing real‑time DSP pipelines on constrained MCUs — not just plugin‑based desktop work.
• Strong acoustic engineering instincts — microphone selection, port design, housing acoustics, wind, occlusion, body coupling.
• Direct experience driving audio component selection and benchmarking with second‑source planning.

Preferred Skills

• Deploying audio DSP, wake-word, or speech models on dedicated low‑power AI accelerators.
• Experience with leading on‑device wake-word engines.
• Multi‑channel audio DSPs and Class-D amplifier design.
• Spatial audio rendering — HRTF, panning, head‑tracked binaural.
• Cloud STT pipelines and end‑to‑end voice UX latency budgets.