--- title: 'Director of AI Research at Otter.ai' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/director-of-ai-research-otter-ai-mountain-view-cwy4eg6yhfj5' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-11-02' --- # Director of AI Research at Otter.ai - **Company:** Otter.ai - **Location:** Mountain View, CA - **Posted:** 2026-10-26 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-02 - **Apply:** https://otter.ai/careers?gh_jid=8044770003 ## Job description ## About the Role We’re building AI that changes how people capture, understand, and act on conversations and meetings. As Director of AI Research, you will lead research and development across automatic speech recognition (ASR), speaker identification (SID), large language models (LLMs), and audio language models. Your work will shape our AI capabilities, product direction, and long-term research strategy. This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who combines research depth with experience building and deploying AI systems at scale. You will set technical priorities, guide model and infrastructure decisions, and work directly with the team on challenging research and engineering problems. Partnering closely with Product, Engineering, and Data teams, you will turn research advances into reliable product capabilities. You will also build the team, experimentation practices, and technical foundation needed to move quickly while maintaining high standards for quality and performance. ## Your Impact - Set the research direction: Define and execute a research roadmap across speech recognition, speaker identification, LLMs, and audio language models, connecting technical advances to user needs and business priorities. - Own the model lifecycle: Guide data preparation, model architecture, pre-training, post-training, evaluation, and deployment. Establish rigorous methods for measuring quality and improving models using large-scale training data. - Lead and develop the team: Hire, mentor, and grow a high-performing AI research team. Build a culture of scientific rigor, open collaboration, and clear accountability. Encourage strong viewpoints backed by measurable results and a collaborative mindset that helps the team reach shared decisions. - Scale training and inference: Drive improvements in model accuracy, latency, reliability, and cost through large-scale training, inference optimization, and efficient use of compute. - Translate research into products: Evaluate emerging methods, reproduce promising results, and adapt advances from the literature to practical product challenges. - Shape the AI platform: Partner with Engineering and Data teams to strengthen the infrastructure, tooling, and workflows that support rapid experimentation and reliable deployment. - Identify new opportunities: Explore AI capabilities that expand what our products can do and support the company’s long-term vision. We're looking for someone who brings - A Master’s degree or higher in Computer Science or a related technical field; a PhD is preferred. - 10+ years of software engineering or AI research and development experience, including 4+ years of experience managing technical teams. - A track record of leading AI research with meaningful scientific and product impact, supported by publications and deployed systems. - Deep expertise in speech technologies and LLMs, with hands-on experience in transformer architectures, reinforcement learning, and multimodal model training. - Experience designing, training, evaluating, and optimizing large-scale ML systems, including distributed training and inference in GPU environments. - Strong proficiency in Python and PyTorch, with experience using Kubernetes and related infrastructure to run ML workloads at scale. - Demonstrated ability to set technical direction, develop teams, and collaborate across Research, Product, Engineering, and Data. - Sound judgment in balancing research ambition, execution speed, and product quality. - Familiarity with application frameworks and technologies such as Django, FastAPI, and WebSockets. - A commitment to solving difficult technical problems and delivering measurable value to users. - ## About Otter.ai We are in the business of shaping the future of work. Our mission is to make conversations more valuable. With over 1B meetings transcribed, [Otter.ai](http://otter.ai/) is the world’s leading tool for meeting transcription, summarization, and collaboration. Using artificial intelligence, Otter generates real-time automated meeting notes, summaries, and other insights from in-person and virtual meetings - turning meetings into accessible, collaborative, and actionable data that can be shared across teams and organizations. The company is backed by early investors in Google, DeepMind, Zoom, and Tesla. Otter.ai is an equal opportunity employer. We proudly celebrate diversity and are dedicated to inclusivity. *Otter.ai does not accept unsolicited resumes from 3rd party recruitment agencies without a written agreement in place for permanent placements. Any resume or other candidate information submitted outside of established candidate submission guidelines (including through our website or via email to any Otter.ai employee) and without a written agreement otherwise will be deemed to be our sole property, and no fee will be paid should we hire the candidate. Salary range Salary Range: $244,000 to $313,000 USD per year. This salary range represents the low and high end of the estimated salary range for this position. The actual base salary offered for the role is dependent on several factors. Our base salary is just one component of a comprehensive total rewards package. #LI-Hybrid ## About Otter.ai ## Core Business - **Primary industry/industries**: AI-powered meeting transcription and productivity software - **Target customers**: B2B – enterprises, teams, sales, recruiting, education, and media professionals - **Mission or purpose statement**: “Create smarter tools that free people up to do their best work.” ## Products & Services - **Otter Meeting Agent**: AI notetaker that joins meetings, records conversations, provides live transcription (multi-language), automated summaries, action items, and insights. Available as a desktop app (Mac/Windows) and mobile. Integrates with CRM, calendar, and can be queried via Otter AI Chat. - **Otter SDR Agent**: Handles live demos and booked meetings directly from a company’s website. - **Otter Recruiting Agent**: Provides real-time interview assistance, structured candidate insights, and automated follow-ups. - **Otter for Education**: Tailored transcription and note-taking for classroom or lecture settings. - **Otter for Media**: Optimized for content creation and media workflows. - **Otter AI Chat / MCP Server**: Connects meeting knowledge to AI chat tools like ChatGPT and Claude for deeper analysis and workflow automation. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed - **Key Metrics**: - Annual Revenue: $12.9M (estimated) - Total Funding: $73M - Headcount: 202 employees (+14.6% YoY) - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Spectrum Equity, Omega Venture Partners (lead Series B), Horizons Ventures, Draper Associates, DFJ DragonFund - **Growth Signals**: - 14.6% headcount growth year-over-year - 30 active job postings (up 36.4% monthly, 57.9% quarterly) - Expanding product lineup with specialized AI agents (SDR, Recruiting) - Operating in 7 countries (US, Canada, UK, Philippines, Vietnam, Brazil, India) ## Competitive Advantages - **Real-time, multi-language transcription** with speaker recognition and automated summaries – differentiates from basic recording tools. - **Enterprise-grade security and governance** (compliance controls, data governance). - **Integrated AI chat** that surfaces meeting knowledge across connected apps (CRM, MCP Server). - **Specialized agents** (SDR, Recruiting) that automate workflows beyond note-taking. - **High user satisfaction** (4.6/5 product rating) and strong employer brand (4.5/5 on Glassdoor, Great Place to Work certified). ## Strategic Focus - Scaling AI capabilities beyond transcription into proactive meeting intelligence and workflow automation. - Expanding enterprise adoption with tailored agents for sales, recruiting, and education. - Deepening integrations with CRM and AI chat ecosystems (ChatGPT, Claude) to become a “Conversational Knowledge Engine.” - Growing headcount and hiring across engineering, product, sales, marketing, and data science. ## Why Work Here - **Hybrid work model**: Mix of in-office (Mountain View and San Francisco) and remote days; quarterly Bay Area gatherings. - **Compensation**: Highly competitive salaries, equity option packages, 401(k) plan. - **Time off**: Minimum 15 days PTO, 18 weeks maternity leave, 8 weeks paternity leave. - **Health & wellness**: Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, life insurance, disability from day one. - **Office perks**: Free parking, pet-friendly, on-site fitness center, putting green, bocce court, unlimited snacks. - **Culture**: Values include Be Authentic, Think Team, Create Delight, Build Fast, Push Limits. High employee satisfaction (4.5/5 on Glassdoor) and Great Place to Work certified. - **Engineering culture**: Strong technical talent pool (alumni from Google, Meta, Apple, Uber, AWS); 104 employees in technical roles (37% of workforce). ## Sources 1. [otter.ai (main site)](https://otter.ai/) 2. [otter.ai careers page](https://home.otter.ai/careers) 3. [LinkedIn company page](https://www.linkedin.com/company/otter-ai) 4. [Indeed company profile](https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Otter.ai) ## Other roles at Otter.ai - [Senior Director of Sales](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-director-of-sales-otter-ai-san-francisco-2at2csj1f1c8) — San Francisco, CA - [Senior Sales Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-sales-manager-otter-ai-san-francisco-93gzfxxxsmvp) — San Francisco, CA - [Software Engineer, Front-End (New Grad)](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-front-end-new-grad-otter-ai-mountain-view-b8xkrme64zfq) — Mountain View, CA - [Senior Software Engineer, Frontend](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-frontend-otter-ai-mountain-view-7383md70hts8) — Mountain View, CA - [Software Engineer, Frontend](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-frontend-otter-ai-mountain-view-3fx2mka8c50a) — Mountain View, CA - [Engineering Director, Infrastructure](https://feeny.ai/job/engineering-director-infrastructure-otter-ai-mountain-view-xk4qv9phsmta) — Mountain View, CA - [Head of Brand & Storytelling](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-brand-storytelling-otter-ai-san-francisco-5xgn38h5cp4g) — San Francisco, CA - [Software Engineer, AI Agent & LLM](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-ai-agent-llm-otter-ai-mountain-view-3zdqcxnm8800) — Mountain View, CA - [Senior Software Engineer, AI Agent & LLM](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-ai-agent-llm-otter-ai-mountain-view-61x0wsgq1ksq) — Mountain View, CA - [Senior Solution Architect](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-solution-architect-otter-ai-mountain-view-qnsafvy4xncg) — Mountain View, CA