Research Engineer – Audio & Speech Models

The Role

As a Research Engineer - Audio & Speech Models, you will be a core contributor on Zyphra’s Audio Team, building the next generation of open-source autoencoders, ASR, TTS, SSL, and speech-to-speech models. You will be deeply involved in the entire model training process, from data gathering and processing to designing novel architectures and training methodologies.

You’ll Work Across

• Large-scale audio training runs
• Performance optimization of our training stack
• Audio dataset collection, processing, and evaluation
• Architecture and training methodology ablations and improvements

What We're Looking For / Requirements

• Strong research taste and intuition. The ability to work through a research project from conception to execution to write-up.
• Strong implementation and prototyping ability (can take an idea from conception to experimentation quickly)
• The ability to work well with others in a high-paced research setting
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, and can work effectively on both research and engineering implementation at scale

Qualifications / Additional Skills

• Expertise and intuition for training models in the audio domain, including text-to-speech, ASR, speech-to-speech, speech-emotion-recognition, or other models
• Experience in training audio autoencoders
• Understanding of signal processing, especially of audio signals
• Experience with diffusion models, consistency models, or GANs
• Experience with training on large-scale (multi-node) GPU clusters
• Strong grasp of proper experimental methodology for running rigorous ablations and other hypothesis testing
• Understanding of and interest in large-scale, highly parallel data processing pipelines
• Proficiency with PyTorch and Python
• Experience contributing to large pre-existing codebases and rapidly getting up to speed
• Previously published machine learning research in well-respected venues
• Postgraduate degree in a scientific subject (Computer Science, EE/EECS, Mathematics, Physics, Machine Learning)

Why Work at Zyphra

• Our research methodology is grounded in methodical, step-by-step approaches to ambitious goals. Both deep research and engineering excellence are equally valued
• We strongly value new and crazy ideas and are very willing to bet big on new ideas
• We move as quickly as we can; we aim to minimize the bar to impact as low as possible
• We all enjoy what we do and love discussing AI

Benefits and Perks

• Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and FSA plans
• Competitive compensation and 401(k) plan
• Relocation and immigration support on a case-by-case basis
• In-office snacks and meals provided
• Unlimited PTO and company holidays
• In-person team in San Francisco with a collaborative, high-energy environment