Senior Audio Engineer & Studio Lead

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

Job summary

David AI seeks an in-house audio expert to define and enforce audio standards, guide contributors, and run the studio side of in-person recordings. You will manage the hardware, sessions, and ensure quality for all programs.

You will author setup guides and troubleshooting docs across ~20 languages, train the QA team, and judge acoustic targets for processed or AI-generated audio, with audits to ensure consistent quality.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in audio engineering, recording, or production.
• 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.

Responsibilities

• 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
• Work with ML researchers to identify and define audio events and acoustic quality issues
• 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.

Skills

Audio engineering

Critical listening

DAW proficiency

Troubleshooting

Remote support

Job description

David AI seeks an in-house audio expert to define and enforce audio standards, guide contributors, and run the studio side of in-person recordings. You will manage the hardware, sessions, and ensure quality for all programs.

You will author setup guides and troubleshooting docs across ~20 languages, train the QA team, and judge acoustic targets for processed or AI-generated audio, with audits to ensure consistent quality.