---
title: 'Software Engineer - Applied AI at Deepgram'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-applied-ai-deepgram-san-francisco-4xyjwxz5075h'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-08'
---

# Software Engineer - Applied AI at Deepgram

- **Company:** Deepgram
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $174k–$212k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-11-04
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-08
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/Deepgram/3c9a9729-7ff1-49e3-a388-f108745e4b41

## Job description

Company Overview 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 200,000 developers and 1,300+ 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 50,000 years of audio and transcribed more than 1 trillion words. There is no organization in the world that understands voice better than Deepgram.

Company Operating Rhythm 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.

## Team Overview

The Applied AI team takes on the voice AI problems that don’t have off-the-shelf answers. We work directly with enterprise customers and technology partners, from conversational AI and customer experience platforms to restaurant brands, and much of the work is zero to one. Current focus areas include robust ASR in noisy outdoor environments, self-service fine-tuning and model adaptation, domain-aware voice agents for drive-thru and phone ordering, agent scoring and evaluation, real-time operational analytics, and on-site hardware integration. We’re a small team that works in person in San Francisco, ships to production quickly, and stays close to the customers we build for.

## Key Goals

- Ship production features in live voice agent products, such as drive-thru and phone ordering, within your first quarter.
- Own customer problems end to end: hear the issue, find the root cause, and get the fix into production.
- Help build reusable agent modules, like ordering and reservations, so new customers and industries launch faster.
- Make agents more accurate on real-world menus and catalogs, keeping structured data consistent across hundreds of locations.
- Contribute to fine-tuning and model adaptation so customers get accurate results on their own vocabulary and domains.
- Spot problems across the product before anyone asks, then fix them or bring a proposed solution.
- Run experiments that show whether new functionality improves outcomes for customers.

## Minimum Skills, Knowledge & Capabilities

- Experience building and shipping backend services that run in production in the cloud.
- Operates AI-native: you build with modern AI coding tools as your default way of working, not occasionally, and use them to move fast without lowering the quality bar.
- Learns quickly and takes on unfamiliar parts of the stack with little ramp-up.
- Finds work instead of waiting for it: you recognize problems, propose solutions, and follow them through.
- Has taken something from idea to production, at work or on your own time.
- Communicates clearly with teammates and is comfortable working directly with customers.
- Builds for the customer’s outcome, with a high bar for quality and no over-engineering.
- Comfortable working across languages. Our stack is mainly Kotlin and Python, with TypeScript on the front end.

## Preferred Qualifications (nice-to-have)

- Hands-on experience training, fine-tuning, or adapting models, through work, research, or substantial projects.
- Experience building evaluation or scoring for models or agents.
- Experience with audio, speech-to-text, or text-to-speech.
- Experience as a founder or early startup engineer, or taking a system from zero to one.
- Typically 2+ years of engineering experience, or equivalent demonstrated experience.

Notice: We're aware of individuals impersonating Deepgram recruiters. All legitimate Deepgram recruiting communication comes from an @[deepgram.com](http://deepgram.com) email address. If you've received a message claiming to be Deepgram, please forward it to careers@deepgram.com.

## About Deepgram

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Deepgram is a foundational AI company building real-time voice AI infrastructure for developers and enterprises to power speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and voice agent applications.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series C, Unicorn status)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA (remote-first, distributed across 20+ states and 5+ countries)
- **Founded**: 2015
- **Founders**: Scott Stephenson (CEO), Adam Sypniewski, Noah Shutty

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Voice AI / Artificial Intelligence / Speech Recognition
- **Target customers**: Developers, product teams, enterprises, and platforms embedding voice AI (B2B, B2D)
- **Mission statement**: To transform the way humans interact with machines by unlocking the productivity of the world through voice technology

## Products & Services
- **Speech-to-Text (STT)**: Real-time and batch transcription with models like Nova-3 (world’s most accurate real-time STT) and Flux Multilingual (first conversational STT in 10 languages). Available via cloud or self-hosted. [deepgram.com](https://deepgram.com/)
- **Text-to-Speech (TTS)**: Aura-2, professional-grade enterprise TTS for natural voice output. [deepgram.com](https://deepgram.com/)
- **Voice Agent API**: A unified API that combines STT, TTS, and LLM orchestration into a single endpoint, reducing complexity, latency, and cost for building conversational AI agents. [deepgram.com](https://deepgram.com/)
- **Custom Models**: Ability to train custom speech models for unique use cases and domain-specific vocabulary. [deepgram.com](https://deepgram.com/)
- **Saga (Voice OS)**: An operating system for voice applications, announced as a platform-level offering. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/deepgram)
- **Deepgram for Restaurants**: Vertical solution for drive-thru and restaurant voice ordering (95%+ containment), powered by the acquisition of OfOne. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/deepgram)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: $1.3 billion unicorn status (as of Series C in 2024) [deepgram.com](https://deepgram.com/about)
- **Key Metric**: $130 million in Series C funding (total raised: ~$202M+ including $72M Series B) [deepgram.com](https://deepgram.com/about)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Y Combinator, NVIDIA (proud partner), with Series C led by prominent venture firms [ycombinator.com](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/deepgram)
- **Growth Signals**: Processed 50,000+ years of audio and 1 trillion+ words; trusted by 200,000+ developers and 1,300+ organizations; acquired OfOne for restaurant voice AI; launched Flux Multilingual, Nova-3, Aura-2, and Saga in rapid succession [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/deepgram)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Foundational AI moat**: Deepgram is a research-driven company that builds its own end-to-end deep learning models (not wrappers), giving them control over accuracy, latency, and cost.
- **Unified API advantage**: A single Voice Agent API that replaces the need to stitch together separate STT, TTS, and LLM components—reducing complexity and latency.
- **Scale and experience**: The most experienced voice AI platform in the world, having processed the largest volume of voice data (50,000+ years of audio).
- **Enterprise-grade reliability**: Offers on-premise/self-hosted deployment options for compliance-heavy industries (healthcare, finance, legal).
- **NVIDIA partnership**: Access to scalable GPU infrastructure for training and inference, differentiating them from competitors.

## Strategic Focus
- **Voice AI Economy leadership**: Positioning Deepgram as the infrastructure layer for the emerging "trillion-dollar Voice AI economy."
- **Multilingual expansion**: Launching Flux Multilingual to capture global markets beyond English.
- **Vertical industry penetration**: Moving beyond horizontal API into vertical solutions (restaurants via OfOne acquisition, medical transcription).
- **Agentic AI**: Doubling down on Voice Agent API and autonomous voice agents as the next growth vector.
- **Platform expansion**: Building Saga (Voice OS) to become the operating system for all voice applications.

## Why Work Here
- **Remote-first culture**: Deepgram is a remote-first company with employees across 20+ states in the US and 5+ countries. They offer freedom and flexibility to work from anywhere. [deepgram.com](https://deepgram.com/careers)
- **Strong benefits package**: Medical, dental, vision insurance; mental health support; unlimited PTO; 12 paid US holidays; parental leave; 401(k) with company match; wellness stipend; learning/education stipend; quarterly productivity stipend; one-time office upgrade stipend. [deepgram.com](https://deepgram.com/careers)
- **Inclusive environment**: Active Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) and a stated commitment to "every voice, heard and understood." [deepgram.com](https://deepgram.com/careers)
- **Annual offsites**: While remote-first, the company convenes annually for in-person offsites to foster collaboration and connection. [deepgram.com](https://deepgram.com/careers)
- **Engineering culture**: Values include "be curious," "grow together," "do the right thing," "think smart, act fast," and "put the customer first." The culture is described as self-motivated, positive, passionate, and competitive. [deepgram.com](https://deepgram.com/careers)
- **Research-driven environment**: Deepgram was founded by physicists and maintains a strong research team (Research Scientist, Research Engineer roles), offering the chance to work on cutting-edge AI. [ycombinator.com](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/deepgram)
- **Salary transparency**: Publicly lists salary ranges for roles (e.g., Research Scientist $150K-$250K, SDR $50K-$60K), indicating compensation transparency. [ycombinator.com](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/deepgram)

## Sources
1. [deepgram.com - Careers Page](https://deepgram.com/careers)
2. [deepgram.com - Product Page](https://deepgram.com/)
3. [deepgram.com - About Page](https://deepgram.com/about)
4. [ycombinator.com - Deepgram Profile](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/deepgram)
5. [linkedin.com - Deepgram Company Page](https://www.linkedin.com/company/deepgram)

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