Senior Software Engineer, Inference

AssemblyAI; New York (NY); On-site; USD 190,000 - 225,000; Full time

Job summary

AssemblyAI is hiring a Software Engineer to turn cutting-edge AI research into production-ready products. You will join a fast-paced engineering team bridging research and applied teams to deliver model capabilities via robust APIs for production traffic at scale.

The role emphasizes building customer-facing APIs, scaling inference infrastructure, and partnering with researchers. You’ll work across the stack and collaborate with customers to inform product direction in a merit-driven environment.

Qualifications

• Backend engineering experience building and supporting production APIs or ML infrastructure.
• Interest in AI/ML and ability to reason about models to make engineering decisions.
• Experience collaborating with researchers, applied engineers, and customers.
• Ability to work across the stack and contribute to backend services, tooling, and infrastructure.

Responsibilities

• Design and ship customer-facing APIs exposing new model capabilities from prototype to launch.
• Scale inference infrastructure to support 1M+ API users.
• Partner with researchers to productionize new techniques, turning experiments into scalable features.
• Work with customers and applied teams to understand usage and feed insights into product direction.
• Contribute across the stack: backend services, inference infra, SDKs, internal tooling.

Skills

Backend engineering

ML infrastructure

APIs in production

Cross-functional collaboration

Comfort with ambiguity

Job description

Why AssemblyAI

AssemblyAI builds the best-in-class Voice AI models powering the next generation of voice applications. Our models serve 600M+ inference calls monthly, process 1M+ hours of audio daily, and power 2 billion+ end-user experiences. The Voice AI space is at an inflection point; we’re looking for folks truly excited to join a small team and help define the future of the industry.

We are one of the most capital-efficient AI companies on the planet - with under 100 people generating roughly $500K ARR per employee, we sit among the top 5 most revenue-dense teams within the fastest-growing AI companies today. That's not an accident; it's a deliberate choice to stay lean, move fast, and give every person on the team outsized ownership and impact. With thousands of customers including Granola, Fireflies, Figure AI, and CallRail, the company has real scale - processing over 2 million hours of audio daily and handling more than 1 million API calls every day. This is a rare growth-stage opportunity where the business is proven and the trajectory is steep, but the team is still small enough that your fingerprints are on everything.

If you've ever felt buried under layers of bureaucracy, starved of real ownership, or frustrated watching your work disappear into a slow-moving org, AssemblyAI is built differently. The company operates as a true meritocracy, with no heavy planning or approval processes and no gatekeeping on the tools or information you need. For anyone who genuinely cares about voice AI, not as a trend to chase, but as a technology to build, this is the place where the most interesting problems at the most interesting scale are being solved by a team small enough that you'll actually know everyone's name.

We’re committed to creating a space where our employees can bring their full selves to work and have equal opportunity to succeed. No matter your race, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, origin, ability, age, veteran status, if joining this mission speaks to you, we encourage you to apply!

About the role:

We're hiring a Software Engineer to help turn cutting-edge AI research into products our customers rely on every day. You'll sit on a fast-paced engineering team between our research org and our Applied teams, taking new model capabilities from proof of concept to robust, well-documented APIs serving production traffic at scale.

What You’ll Do:

• Design and ship customer-facing APIs that expose new model capabilities, owning them from prototype through launch and ongoing iteration.
• Scale inference infrastructure to support our 1M+ api users
• Partner with researchers to productionize new techniques. For example, turning a notebook or POC into something with the latency, reliability, and ergonomics customers expect.
• Work with our customers and Applied teams to understand how users are building with our products, and feed that back into product design and research direction.
• Contribute across the stack as needed: backend services, inference infrastructure, SDKs, internal tooling.

What You’ll Need:

• Strong backend engineering experience, including building and supporting machine learning infrastructure and/or customer-facing APIs in production.
• Comfort operating with ambiguity. Research timelines and product timelines don't always line up, and you're energized rather than frustrated by that.
• Genuine curiosity about AI/ML. You don't need to be a researcher, but you should want to understand what the models are doing well enough to make good engineering decisions around them.
• Strong collaboration skills. You'll be working daily with researchers, applied engineers, and sometimes customers, people with very different contexts and priorities, and the role only works if you enjoy that.

Pay Transparency:

AssemblyAI strives to recruit and retain exceptional talent from diverse backgrounds while ensuring pay equity for our team. Our salary ranges are based on paying competitively for our size, stage, and industry, and are one part of many compensation, benefit, and other reward opportunities we provide.

There are many factors that go into salary determinations, including relevant experience, skill level, qualifications assessed during the interview process, and maintaining internal equity with peers on the team. The range shared below is a general expectation for the function as posted, but we are also open to considering candidates who may be more or less experienced than outlined in the job description. In this case, we will communicate any updates in the expected salary range.

The provided range is the expected salary for candidates in the U.S. Outside of those regions, there may be a change in the range which will be communicated to candidates throughout the interview process.

Salary range: $190,000 - $225,000

AI to Interview:

If you’re selected for an interview, please review this resource to better understand how AssemblyAI approaches the use of AI in our interview process.

GDPR privacy notice:

Candidates from the EU should review this job applicant privacy notice before applying.