Senior Machine Learning Engineer_Linguistics and Speech

Description

This senior role sits within the core voice platform, which covers speech recognition, conversation management and speech generation.

You will bring linguistic and speech expertise to the design, build and rollout of voice AI products, working alongside engineers, linguists and product managers.

Responsibilities

• Take full ownership of language coverage: add new languages and locales, and keep language-specific instructions, text normalization and pronunciation rules up to date.
• Study hard speech problems across many languages, accents and dialects, and map the problem space for each language with other linguists.
• Investigate failures in production calls, identify which component is responsible, and push the fix through with the team.
• Work with engineers to pick the right linguistic problems to solve, and write code for the features that shape the user experience.
• Work with product managers and customers to learn their use cases and language challenges, and build solutions that help them succeed.
• Design linguistic experiments that inform technology decisions, including choosing speech-to-text and text-to-speech models and vendors.
• Build AI-assisted tooling to analyze linguistic problems at scale.
• Mentor colleagues and share knowledge across linguistics and voice AI engineering.

Requirements

• A Master's or PhD in linguistics, cognitive science or a related field.
• A specialization in phonetics, acoustics, psycholinguistics or cognitive science, applied or interdisciplinary rather than theoretical linguistics.
• 4+ years running large-scale experiments and quantitative research in industry or applied research.
• Hands-on experience building voice AI applications.
• Python or a similar language, with working development experience.
• Deep knowledge of how several languages are structured. Fluency in a language other than English is a plus.
• Clear communication of linguistic findings to engineers, product managers and customers.
• Experience evaluating speech recognition and speech synthesis systems is considered an asset.
• Experience building applications on LLMs, including prompt engineering, is considered an asset.
• Self-directed and focused on results, and comfortable working with many stakeholders.
• Critical thinking about how to bring AI into your own work, with hands-on use of AI tools such as Claude Code, Cursor or Windsurf.

Conditions

Base pay for positions in this location is $161,300 - $274,200, plus equity where applicable, variable or incentive pay, and benefits.

Sales roles generally have a competitive On Target Earnings incentive structure; this is not a sales role.

The base pay shown is a guideline. Actual total compensation depends on qualifications, skill level, competencies and work location, and compensation follows the location where the role is based and may change.

Work persona is flexible, remote or required in office, assigned based on the nature of the work and the assigned location. The company may use a third-party service to check the distance between your home and the nearest office.

Benefits

• Health plans, including flexible spending accounts.
• 401(k) plan with company match.
• Employee stock purchase plan (ESPP).
• Matching donations.
• Flexible time away plan and family leave programs.