Job title: Speech Research Lead
Job type: Permanent
Emp type: Full-time
Industry: Generative AI
Functional Expertise: Gen-Speech/TTS LLMs Speech Speech-to-Speech Voice Conversion/Dubbing
Salary type: Annual
Salary: negotiable
Location: San Francisco, CA
Job published: 01/11/2025
Job ID: 34146

Job Description

Want to build speech AI that actually sounds human?

You'll be joining a well-funded speech AI startup with strong customer traction. They're building ultra-realistic voice technology that handles natural laughter, breathing, seamless language switching, and accurate pronunciation across languages and accents.

As their Speech Research Lead, you'll have the resources and real-world applications to work on frontier speech research: real-time two-way conversations with emotional awareness, novel architectures that balance speed with control, and advancing their multi-lingual capabilities.

What you'll do

  • Lead SOTA research advancing their core speech models and product capabilities

  • Oversee large-scale model training and data system development

  • Lead and grow the ML team during a critical scaling phase

What you'll bring

  • Extensive experience in speech synthesis or generative modeling across multiple modalities

  • Strong background in LLMs and modern language model architectures

  • Proven ability to take research from concept to deployed systems

  • Experience training large-scale models in production environments

Nice to have

  • Understanding of cross-lingual speech challenges and linguistic fundamentals

  • Published research in speech or generative modeling

Ideally based in San Francisco but open to remote internationally. Competitive compensation up to $400K base (depending on experience) plus substantial equity package.