---
title: 'Senior Software Engineer - Backend & Machine Learning at Hume AI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-backend-machine-learning-hume-ai-new-york-new-york-wb2j7yff5grj'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-07'
---

# Senior Software Engineer - Backend & Machine Learning at Hume AI

- **Company:** Hume AI
- **Location:** New York New York, United States
- **Compensation:** $180k–$250k
- **Posted:** 2025-07-22
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-07
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/humeai/jobs/4816209008

## Job description

Hume AI is seeking a talented senior software engineer with experience in backend services and ML infrastructure who is interested in working with our team to build state-of-the-art audio models and evaluation tools. Join us in the heart of New York City and contribute to our endeavor to ensure that AI is guided by human values, the most pivotal challenge (and opportunity) of the 21st century.

## About Us

Hume AI is a Series B startup dedicated to building artificial intelligence that is directly optimized for human well-being. As the first company to release speech language models, we’re focused on expanding our research to encompass audio understanding models and evaluation platforms for enterprises.

Our goal is to enable a future in which technology draws on an understanding of human emotional expression to better serve human goals. As part of our mission, we also conduct groundbreaking scientific research, publish in leading scientific journals like [Nature](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01489-2), and support a non-profit, The Hume Initiative, that has released the first concrete ethical guidelines for empathic AI ([www.thehumeinitiative.org](http://www.thehumeinitiative.org/)). You can learn more about us on our website (https://hume.ai/) and read about us in [WIRED](https://www.wired.com/story/hume-ai-emotional-intelligence/), [Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivastava/2024/03/27/feeling-sad-excited-or-bored-this-startup-claims-its-ai-can-mostly-tell/), and [Venturebeat](https://venturebeat.com/ai/who-needs-gpt-4o-voice-mode-humes-evi-2-is-here-with-emotionally-inflected-voice-ai-and-api/).

## About the Role

We are looking for an experienced and motivated senior engineer with experience in backend services and ML infrastructure. In this role you will help us integrate cutting edge AI models into services and toolkits for researchers and developers. You will work closely with research scientists and other engineers to build new capabilities into the Hume platform, and you will have the opportunity to take part in a wide range of engineering initiatives across backend applications, cloud infrastructure, and the ML lifecycle, including evaluation and deployment at scale.

## Requirements

- Expertise in the Python ecosystem and popular ML libraries and tools (e.g. PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow, XGBoost, sklearn, pandas, numpy).
- Experience building and deploying models for inference services.
- Experience writing backend services in multiple languages (e.g. Kotlin, Go, Rust, Java, C++).
- Understanding of core ML concepts including model architecture, training, and evaluation.
- Expertise working with storage and compute on a cloud platform (e.g.Google Cloud, AWS).
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills.

Bonus

- Familiarity with data engineering principles and/or building large-scale data pipelines.
- Familiarity with building and deploying LLM-integrated products.
- Experience working at the intersection of machine learning research and engineering.
- Understanding of modern deployment strategies utilizing cloud technologies. (e.g. blue/green, canary deployments, etc).
- Experience using service deployment tooling (e.g. Kubernetes, Helm, Docker, Argo).

Application Note

Please apply only to the position that best aligns with your qualifications. If you submit multiple applications or have applied within the past 6 months, only your initial submission will be considered. Annual Salary $180,000—$250,000 USD

## About Hume AI

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Research Services / Emotion AI / Voice AI
- Target customers: B2B (developers, enterprises, healthcare, finance, creative industries)
- Mission: “to ensure that artificial intelligence is developed in ways that are beneficial to humanity” and “serve human goals and emotional well-being”

## Products & Services
- **Empathic Voice Interface (EVI)**: A real-time, emotionally intelligent voice AI that measures vocal modulations and responds with a speech-language model trained on millions of human interactions. Supports interruptibility, back-channeling, and expressive instruction following. (Closed-source, API)
- **Octave TTS**: A text-to-speech system built on LLM intelligence, enabling context-aware, expressive speech synthesis with voice design, cloning, and modulation. (Closed-source, API)
- **Expression Measurement Models**: State-of-the-art models for voice, face, and language that capture hundreds of dimensions of human expression (48+ emotions, 600+ voice descriptors). Available via API for batch and streaming analysis. (Closed-source, API)
- **Human Feedback API**: Allows developers to create and manage evaluation studies with a worldwide pool of vetted participants for preference data. (API)
- **Open-Source Models & Datasets**: Publicly available speech-language models, datasets (e.g., TADA), and evaluation tools for the community. (Open-source)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not disclosed
- **Total Funding**: $75.7M (LinkedIn) / $74.02M (CB Insights) – conflicting reports; both cited
- **Key Metric**: Annual estimated revenue of $1.9M (LinkedIn estimate)
- **Notable Investors**: Aegis Ventures (Seed), Union Square Ventures (Series A), EQT Ventures (Series B); also includes participation from other investors across rounds
- **Growth Signals**: Series B of $50M raised in March 2024; 43 employees (as of mid-2026) with a monthly growth rate of +6%; operates in 7 countries; recent launch of Octave 2 (preview) and EVI 4-mini with expanded language support and lower latency

## Competitive Advantages
- **Emotional Intelligence**: Decades of research in multimodal emotional intelligence (10+ years) and semantic space theory pioneered by Alan Cowen (Chief Scientific Advisor)
- **Speech-Language Model**: Unique integration of language modeling and TTS for expressive, context-aware speech that reduces hallucinations and latency
- **Open-Source Leadership**: Releases state-of-the-art models and datasets to the community, fostering adoption and trust
- **Fine-Grained Emotion Capture**: 48+ emotions, 600+ voice descriptors, and support for 50+ languages
- **Domain-Specific Datasets**: Tailored datasets for healthcare, finance, and conversational audio

## Strategic Focus
- **Current Priorities**: Advancing empathic voice AI with lower latency and broader language support; deepening developer ecosystem via APIs and SDKs; expanding into enterprise use cases (call centers, coaching, digital companions, health monitoring)
- **Direction**: Continue open-sourcing research while commercializing closed-source APIs; grow the research team and platform engineering capabilities

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Mission-driven research lab focused on building AI for human well-being; collaborative and intellectually rigorous environment
- **Remote/Hybrid**: Remote-friendly with flexible options; hubs in New York (HQ), San Jose, and remote worldwide
- **Benefits & Perks**: Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage; meaningful equity packages; annual learning stipend for conferences and courses; flexible PTO; regular team offsites
- **Engineering Culture**: Emphasis on cutting-edge research, open-source contributions, and cross-disciplinary work (AI, speech, emotion science); roles include AI Researchers, Senior/Staff AI Research Engineers, and Senior Platform Engineers

## Sources
1. [Hume AI Official Site](https://hume.ai/)
2. [Hume AI Careers](https://www.hume.ai/careers)
3. [LinkedIn Company Page](https://www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai)
4. [CB Insights Profile](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/hume-ai)
5. [Hume API Documentation](https://developer.hume.ai/)

## Other roles at Hume AI

- [Senior Platform Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-platform-engineer-hume-ai-new-york-new-york-jdsfqq3sh4e5) — New York New York, United States
- [AI Researcher](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-researcher-hume-ai-nyc-san-jose-jzn172tkk9x4) — Nyc San Jose, OR
- [Open Role](https://feeny.ai/job/open-role-hume-ai-nyc-san-jose-fh23yft7phfw) — Nyc San Jose, OR
- [Senior/Staff AI Research Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-staff-ai-research-engineer-hume-ai-nyc-san-jose-rfxxk2mrybcr) — Nyc San Jose, OR