Sr. Backend Engineer - Engine Team: API

Deepgram is the leading platform underpinning the emerging trillion-dollar Voice AI economy providing real-time APIs for speech-to-text (STT) text-to-speech (TTS) and building production-grade voice agents at scale. More than 200000 developers and 1300+ organizations build voice offerings that are ‘Powered by Deepgram’ including Twilio Cloudflare Sierra Decagon Vapi Daily Cresta Granola and Jack in the Box. Deepgram’s voice-native foundation models are accessed through cloud APIs or as self-hosted and on-premises software with unmatched accuracy low latency and cost efficiency. Backed by a recent Series C led by leading global investors and strategic partners Deepgram has processed over 50000 years of audio and transcribed more than 1 trillion words. There is no organization in the world that understands voice better than Deepgram.

At Deepgram we expect an AI-first mindset—AI use and comfort aren’t optional they’re core to how we operate innovate and measure performance.

Every team member who works at Deepgram is expected to actively use and experiment with advanced AI tools and even build your own into your everyday work. We measure how effectively AI is applied to deliver results and consistent creative use of the latest AI capabilities is key to success here. Candidates should be comfortable adopting new models and modes quickly integrating AI into their workflows and continuously pushing the boundaries of what these technologies can do.

Additionally we move at the pace of AI. Change is rapid and you can expect your day-to-day work to evolve just as quickly. This may not be the right role if you’re not excited to experiment adapt think on your feet and learn constantly or if you’re seeking something highly prescriptive with a traditional 9-to-5.

Opportunity

Deepgram is looking for a backend software engineer to lead the design and implementation of Deepgram’s products. You will design and implement secure robust and scalable services for speech processing; efficient distributed compute orchestration; optimized scheduling and more. Your skill at building highly reusable code that overcomes technical challenges is paired with an intuition for delightful user experiences. You will be a critical voice in Deepgram’s Product and Engineering teams driving high impact products from start to finish.

What You’ll Do

• Improve Deepgram’s core inference services including areas in networking speech processing audio transcoding and latency and memory optimization

• Develop processes for measuring building and optimizing services to maximize system performance

• Debug complex system issues that include networking scheduling and high performance computing interactions

• Rapidly customize backend services to support our customer needs

• Partner with Product to design and implement new services features and/or products end to end

You’ll Love This Role If You

• Thrive in a fast-paced impact-driven environment where learning new skills on-the-fly is not only encouraged but a regular necessity

• Enjoy balancing decisions about product and feature maturity to decide when to make minimally invasive changes versus when to incorporate detailed design work

It’s Important To Us That You Have

• 3+ years of experience in an industry role

• Programming experience in Rust (or C C++) with competence in Python

• Excellent communication and organizational skills both written and verbal.

• A high level of experience and understanding of version control; preferably git.

• Comprehensive experience with UNIX-style systems.

It Would Be Great if You Had

• Experience with modern machine learning such as experience with a framework like Torch or implementation knowledge of architectures like CNNs RNNS and transformers

• Experience with audio processing

What We Do

Deepgram is the leading voice AI platform for developers building speech-to-text (STT) text-to-speech (TTS) and full speech-to-speech (STS) offerings. 200000+ developers build with Deepgram’s voice-native foundational models – accessed through APIs or as self-managed software – due to our unmatched accuracy latency and pricing. Customers include software companies building voice products co-sell partners working with large enterprises and enterprises solving internal voice AI use cases. The company ended 2024 cash-flow positive with 400+ enterprise customers 3.3x annual usage growth across the past 4 years over 50000 years of audio processed and over 1 trillion words transcribed. There is no organization in the world that understands voice better than Deepgram.

Why Work With Us

Our culture like our product is constantly learning and evolving but the heart of our team is enduring. We are a self-motivated positive passionate and competitive group of people. At Deepgram we put an emphasis on being ourselves being curious growing together and being human. We are a unique bunch who celebrate our differences.

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