Sr Software Engineer, Audio Intelligence

NRG Energy; United States; On-site; USD 150,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, vision, and dental insurance

401K

Flexible spending accounts

Annual bonuses and incentives

Job summary

NRG Energy is looking for a Sr Audio Intelligence Engineer to design and build advanced conversational and audio AI experiences for smart home applications. You will be responsible for optimizing real-time interactions and deploying AI services at scale.

This role requires a Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or a similar field, along with extensive experience in software development, especially with audio and conversational AI systems, and strong Python skills.

Qualifications

• Minimum 5 years of experience in software development, applied science, or ML engineering for Bachelor's.
• Minimum 2 years of experience in software development, applied science, or ML engineering for Master's.
• Strong Python software engineering skills are essential.
• Experience with developing real-time audio and conversational AI systems.
• Experience in production application integration.

Responsibilities

• Design and build conversational and audio AI experiences.
• Optimize real-time interaction performance.
• Build evaluation frameworks for conversational quality.
• Integrate audio intelligence with smart-home context.
• Deploy and monitor production AI services at scale.

Skills

Speech-to-text

Text-to-speech

Audio understanding

Conversational AI systems

Python

LLMs

Multimodal models

Git

CI/CD

Cloud AI services

Education

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, AI/ML, or a related technical field

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

GCP

AWS

Job description

About This Role

We are seeking a Sr Audio Intelligence Engineer to build conversational and audio AI experiences for the smart home. This role will develop real-time speech, audio understanding, and multimodal interaction systems across mobile, panel, camera, and future agentic experiences. In this role, you will be responsible to:

• Design and build conversational and audio AI experiences using STT, TTS, LLMs, audio understanding, and multimodal context.
• Optimize latency, reliability, privacy, grounding, and user experience for real-time interactions.
• Build evaluation frameworks for conversational quality, task completion, audio understanding, customer satisfaction, and safety.
• Integrate audio intelligence with agentic tool use, memory, personalization, and smart-home context.
• Evaluate and benchmark emerging speech, audio, and multimodal AI technologies.
• Deploy and monitor production audio and conversational AI services at scale.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, AI/ML, or a related technical field, and 5+ years of professional experience in software development, applied science, or ML engineering; or
• Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, AI/ML, or a related technical field, and 2+ years of professional experience in software development, applied science, or ML engineering
• Experience with speech-to-text, text-to-speech, audio understanding, or conversational AI systems
• Strong Python software engineering skills
• Experience integrating LLMs or multimodal models into production applications
• Familiarity with prompt engineering, evaluation, conversation design, latency optimization, and cloud AI services
• Experience with Git, CI/CD, production monitoring, and cross-functional product collaboration

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with wake word, streaming audio, real-time inference, ASR/NLU frameworks, or ambient sound classification
• Experience building consumer-facing voice, assistant, smart-home, or conversational products
• Familiarity with edge AI, embedded devices, IoT, Linux-based systems, or hybrid edge/cloud architectures
• Experience with privacy-aware audio systems, grounding, safety, and customer-trust mechanisms
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, GCP/AWS, or scalable AI service deployment

The base salary range for this position is: $150K to $180K. The base salary range above represents the low and high end of the salary range for this position. Actual salaries will vary based on several factors including but not limited to location, experience, and performance. The range listed is just one component of the total compensation package for employees. Other rewards may include annual bonus, short- and long-term incentives, and program-specific awards. In addition the position may be eligible to participate in the benefits program which include, but are not limited to, medical, vision, dental, 401K, and flexible spending accounts.

NRG Energy is committed to a drug and alcohol-free workplace. To the extent permitted by law and any applicable collective bargaining agreement, employees are subject to periodic random drug testing, and post-accident and reasonable suspicion drug and alcohol testing. EOE AA M/F/Protected Veteran Status/Disability. Level, Title and/or Salary may be adjusted based on the applicant's experience or skills.

EEO is the Law Poster (The poster can be found at http://www.eeoc.gov/employers/upload/poster_screen_reader_optimized.pdf)