Research Engineer - Audio & Speech Models

Bison; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical benefits

401(k) plan

Relocation support

Snacks and meals in office

Unlimited PTO

Job summary

Zyphra, an AI company based in San Francisco, seeks a Research Engineer - Audio & Speech Models to advance open-source autoencoders, ASR, TTS, SSL, and speech-to-speech models. You will contribute across data gathering, processing, architecture design, and training.

You will work on large-scale audio training runs, training stack optimization, data processing, and methodology ablations, collaborating with researchers and engineers to push state-of-the-art in audio AI.

Qualifications

• Strong research taste from conception to execution and write-up.
• Ability to prototype ideas quickly from concept to experiment.
• Excellent collaboration and communication in a high-paced research setting.
• Ability to work across research and engineering implementation at scale.

Responsibilities

• Lead large-scale audio training runs and model evaluations.
• Prototype and ablate architectures and training methodologies.
• Process and curate audio data for model training and evaluation.
• Collaborate with researchers and engineers on scalable solutions.

Skills

Research intuition

Implementation prototyping

Communication

Collaboration in fast-paced setting

Education

Postgraduate degree in CS/EE/ML

Tools

PyTorch

Python

Large-scale GPU clusters

Job description

Zyphra is an artificial intelligence company based in San Francisco, California.

The Role:

As a Research Engineer - Audio & Speech Models, you will be a core contributor on Zyphra’s Audio Team, building the next generation of open-source autoencoders, ASR, TTS, SSL, and speech-to-speech models. You will be deeply involved in the entire model training process, from data gathering and processing to designing novel architectures and training methodologies.

You’ll Work Across:

• Large-scale audio training runs

• Performance optimization of our training stack

• Audio dataset collection, processing, and evaluation

• Architecture and training methodology ablations and improvements

What We're Looking For / Requirements:

• Strong research taste and intuition. The ability to work through a research project from conception to execution to write-up.

• Strong implementation and prototyping ability (can take an idea from conception to experimentation quickly)

• The ability to work well with others in a high-paced research setting

• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, and can work effectively on both research and engineering implementation at scale

Qualifications / Additional Skills:

• Expertise and intuition for training models in the audio domain, including text-to-speech, ASR, speech-to-speech, speech-emotion-recognition, or other models

• Experience in training audio autoencoders

• Understanding of signal processing, especially of audio signals

• Experience with diffusion models, consistency models, or GANs

• Experience with training on large-scale (multi-node) GPU clusters

• Strong grasp of proper experimental methodology for running rigorous ablations and other hypothesis testing

• Understanding of and interest in large-scale, highly parallel data processing pipelines

• Proficiency with PyTorch and Python

• Experience contributing to large pre-existing codebases and rapidly getting up to speed

• Previously published machine learning research in well-respected venues

• Postgraduate degree in a scientific subject (Computer Science, EE/EECS, Mathematics, Physics, Machine Learning)

Why Work at Zyphra:

• Our research methodology is grounded in methodical, step-by-step approaches to ambitious goals. Both deep research and engineering excellence are equally valued

• We strongly value new and crazy ideas and are very willing to bet big on new ideas

• We move as quickly as we can; we aim to minimize the bar to impact as low as possible

• We all enjoy what we do and love discussing AI

Benefits and Perks:

• Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and FSA plans

• Competitive compensation and 401(k) plan

• Relocation and immigration support on a case-by-case basis

• In-office snacks and meals provided

• Unlimited PTO and company holidays

• In-person team in San Francisco with a collaborative, high-energy environment