Software Engineer, Data Infrastructure

Cartesia; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Compensation

Health Insurance

Parental Leave

401(k)

Commuter Allowance

Flexible PTO

Meals & Snacks

Your own personal Yoshi

Job summary

Cartesia, a San Francisco-based AI startup, seeks a Software Engineer, Data Infrastructure to own the strategy and execution for all data powering our research. You will design scalable datasets and data pipelines to acquire, process, and curate multimodal data, working closely with research and inference teams.

Your work will shape model capabilities and quality, with emphasis on audio, text, and video data, dataset versioning, and robust loading patterns.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with ML data infrastructure and training data pipelines.
• Experience designing scalable data systems for text, audio, and video.
• Ability to collaborate with research and inference teams.
• Familiarity with dataset versioning and data quality standards.
• Experience with multimodal data including audio processing.

Responsibilities

• Define Cartesia's multi-modal data strategy across pre-training and post-training, spanning human, synthetic, and web-scale sources, with particular depth in audio.
• Design and operate scalable, high-throughput data pipelines for text, audio, and video — covering ingestion, preprocessing, augmentation, dataset versioning, and data loading for training.
• Partner closely with research and inference teams so data systems are co-designed with training and serving infrastructure (batching, GPU-aware loading, evaluation pipelines).
• Establish and enforce rigorous standards for data quality, with a tight feedback loop between dataset characteristics and model behavior.
• Identify and source novel datasets; manage relationships and budgets with external data vendors and partners.

Skills

ML data infrastructure

Data pipelines

Dataset versioning

Multimodal data

Cross-functional collaboration

Large-scale data processing

Job description

About Cartesia

Our mission is to architect AI that learns from and interacts with the world like humans do.

We're pioneering the model architectures that will make this possible. Our founding team met as PhDs at the Stanford AI Lab, where we invented State Space Models or SSMs, a new primitive for training efficient, large-scale foundation models. Our team combines deep expertise in model innovation and systems engineering paired with a design-minded product engineering team to build and ship cutting edge models and experiences.

We're funded by leading investors at Index Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners, along with Factory, Conviction, A Star, General Catalyst, SV Angel, Databricks and others. We're fortunate to have the support of many amazing advisors, and 90+ angels across many industries, including the world's foremost experts in AI.

About the Role

Data is the lifeblood of our models, and we are looking for a Software Engineer, Data Infrastructure to own the strategy and execution for all data at Cartesia. In this highly impactful role, you will build and evolve the datasets that power our cutting-edge research. You will design scalable systems to acquire, process, and curate massive multimodal datasets while partnering closely with research and inference teams. Your work will directly shape the capabilities and quality of our foundational models.

Your Impact

• Define Cartesia's multi-modal data strategy across pre-training and post-training, spanning human, synthetic, and web-scale sources, with particular depth in audio.

• Design and operate scalable, high-throughput data pipelines for text, audio, and video — covering ingestion, preprocessing, augmentation, dataset versioning, and data loading for training.

• Partner closely with research and inference teams so data systems are co-designed with training and serving infrastructure (batching, GPU-aware loading, evaluation pipelines).

• Establish and enforce rigorous standards for data quality, with a tight feedback loop between dataset characteristics and model behavior.

• Identify and source novel datasets; manage relationships and budgets with external data vendors and partners.

What You Bring

• Hands-on experience with ML data infrastructure: training data pipelines, dataset versioning, large-scale data loading, and the interplay between data systems and model training and inference.

• Working knowledge of multimodal data, i.e. audio: formats, preprocessing, augmentation, and large-scale storage and streaming patterns.

• Strong modern engineering execution: clean, well-tested code, fluency with current tools, and a willingness to pick the right tool for the problem rather than defaulting to familiar patterns.

• Experience leading cross-functional technical efforts in a fast-moving, research-driven environment.

• Familiarity with building and evaluating datasets for generative models and reasonable working knowledge of how they’re trained and inference.

Note: Cartesia participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with Form I-9 information to confirm employment eligibility after hire.

More Details

In-office policy: We’re an in-person team based out of offices in San Francisco, London and Bangalore. We love being in the office, hanging out together, and learning from each other every day.

Visa sponsorship: We provide visa sponsorship support and assess each circumstance on a case-by-case basis. However, visa sponsorship is dependent on many factors, including the role you are applying for, and the location you are going to be based, and so we can't always guarantee success. Your Recruiter will work with you to understand your visa sponsorship needs from the first call.

We ship fast. All of our work is novel and cutting edge, and execution speed is paramount. We have a high bar, and we don’t sacrifice quality or design along the way.

We support each other. We have an open & inclusive culture that’s focused on giving everyone the resources they need to succeed.

Our Benefits (US Employees Only)

• Compensation Competitive base salary alongside attractive equity package.
• Health Insurance Fully covered medical insurance along with dental and vision for you and your family.
• Parental Leave 9 weeks paternity & 12 weeks maternity leave
• 401(k)
• Commuter Allowance A monthly stipend to help you get to and from the office.
• Flexible PTO Take as much time as you need to recharge your batteries.
• Meals & Snacks Lunch, dinner and plenty of snacks, provided daily.
• Your own personal Yoshi

Our Commitment to Equal Opportunity

Cartesia is an equal opportunity employer. We consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status.