--- title: 'Software Engineer - Rime Ai at Unusual Ventures' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-rime-ai-unusual-ventures-san-francisco-ckey6rat0q69' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-09' --- # Software Engineer - Rime Ai at Unusual Ventures - **Company:** Unusual Ventures - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-06-24 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09 - **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/unusual/5ea08342-d494-4780-aa0b-f105238feb24 ## Job description Rime is a foundation modeling company that builds voice AI for enterprises running customer experiences at scale. Our models are purpose-built for high-volume conversational deployments, engineered for the accuracy, performance, and deployment flexibility that production environments actually demand. We started from a different premise than the rest of the field: build voice AI for human connection, not slop. Before we trained a single model, we built our own corpus: full-duplex, studio-quality conversational speech of normal people, recorded and annotated by linguists. It's why our models are unparalleled in naturalism, and it's why enterprises pick Rime when pilots need to make it to production. ## Role Overview We're hiring a generalist Software Engineer to work across Rime's stack — platform APIs, systems, infrastructure, and wherever the company needs to move next. Your exact focus will evolve by design: we're building toward a next-generation architecture (gRPC-first, heterogeneous model serving, bidirectional streaming), and we need engineers who can operate across layers rather than stay confined to one. If you have strong fundamentals, a bias for clean interfaces, and the instinct to understand systems end-to-end, this role is for you. ## What You'll Own You’ll be involved in a collection of the following: - Platform APIs: authentication, billing, account management, and the surface that keeps the business running. - Feature work across the stack — supporting the rollout of the next generation of our tts and end-to-end speech models. - Integration and migration work as Rime evolves: token-based authentication, new billing and metering providers. - Maintenance and hardening of the current TTS API stack and assisting in its evolution. - Realtime, low-latency, horizontally scalable streaming speech infrastructure. ## What we're looking for - 5+ years of IC engineering experience with strong backend fundamentals. - Experience with at least one low level language: C++, Rust, Go. - Systems-level thinking: you understand what's happening at the network, storage, and runtime layers, not just the application layer. - You build clean interfaces and design for loose coupling; you don't create systems only you can debug. Bias towards codification and reproducibility. - Comfortable moving through an unfamiliar codebase and shipping without extensive hand-holding. - Strong async written communication — we're global and the written word is how work gets done. Bonus points - Experience integrating 3rd party API’s, such as payments, monitoring, and CRMs. - Experience with gRPC or other bidirectional binary streaming protocols. - Experience with multilingual monorepos where you pick the best language out of merit more than personal experience. - Experience with cloud infrastructure. - Experience at a small startup where the scope of your role was broad and undefined. - Comfort working within ML systems ## Why Join Rime - Work across a real stack with real production stakes — not a feature team inside a large org. - Direct influence on engineering decisions at a formative company stage. - Small, high-ownership team with no layers between you and the work. - Meaningful equity upside. - High ownership, high standards, low bureaucracy. - SF / Bay Area. At Rime, we... - Are outliers - Cut through the hype to focus on the craft - Move fast with agency and freedom - Maintain a growth mindset, finding joy in the struggle - Do the right things, knowing that it'll lead to making money If that sounds like you too, you'll be a great fit for Rime! ## About Unusual Ventures ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: A venture capital firm that provides hands-on operational support and a dedicated engagement model to help technical founders of enterprise AI software startups achieve product-market fit. - **Entity Type**: Private (venture capital fund) - **Headquarters**: Menlo Park, California, United States - **Founded**: 2018 - **Founders**: Jyoti Bansal and John Vrionis ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Venture Capital / Financial Services, with a focus on seed-stage enterprise AI software startups. - **Target customers**: Technical founders of early-stage startups (B2B through founders). - **Mission or purpose statement**: “Raise the bar for what founders should expect from their venture investors” and give technical founders the best odds of finding product-market fit. ## Products & Services - **Unusual Venture Capital**: Seed-stage investment in enterprise AI software startups. - **Unusual Founder Services**: A team of full-time operators embedded with portfolio companies to execute customer discovery, go-to-market strategy, and product-market fit work. - **Unusual Academy**: An immersive program where founders work side by side with Unusual’s founders and expert operators. - **Community & Events**: Quarterly founders events, founder academy, monthly intimate dinners with customer prospects, and go-to-market tools. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not applicable (private fund; not publicly disclosed). - **Key Metric**: 20 employees (as of latest data); 51,647 LinkedIn followers (+16.5% yearly); 10 active job postings (+100% yearly). - **Notable Investors/Partners**: LPs are primarily non-profits (hospitals, foundations, HBCUs). Portfolio companies include Rime (powers nearly 100 million phone calls/month for clients like Mayo Clinic, Dialpad, Upstart, and Asurion). Co-founder Jyoti Bansal is one of only 16 people to build two companies surpassing $100M in revenue (AppDynamics and Harness). - **Growth Signals**: Portfolio companies raise follow-on rounds at valuations “significantly above industry averages.” The firm has seen a 100% increase in job postings year-over-year. ## Competitive Advantages - **Full-time operator model**: Unlike traditional VCs, Unusual embeds dedicated operators who do the work alongside founders, not just advise. - **Concentrated portfolio**: Makes a small number of investments each year, giving each founder full attention. - **Proven founders**: Jyoti Bansal (AppDynamics, Harness) and John Vrionis (30+ billion-dollar outcomes) bring deep first-hand experience. - **The Unusual Method**: A purpose-built framework for product-market fit, refined through thousands of customer conversations. - **LP alignment**: LPs are primarily non-profits, creating a “forces for good” ethos. ## Strategic Focus - Continue investing in seed-stage enterprise AI software startups. - Expand the Unusual Method and Founder Services to increase portfolio success rates. - Build a close-knit, supportive founder community to drive repeatable PMF. ## Why Work Here - **Culture**: “Forces for good” – employees work with a mission-driven team committed to founders through the hard phases. 5.0/5.0 employer rating (1 review) with high marks for work-life balance, compensation, and career growth. - **Work environment**: Small team (20 people) with high impact. Offices in Menlo Park (HQ) and San Francisco; team also distributed across the US and Australia. Remote/hybrid policy not explicitly stated, but the presence of multiple offices suggests flexibility. - **Notable perks**: Opportunity to work alongside top technical founders and industry veterans; direct involvement in the product-market fit process; exposure to a concentrated portfolio of cutting-edge AI startups. - **Career path**: Roles across venture operations, sales, finance, and programs. The firm actively hires for roles that support portfolio companies (e.g., Founding Account Executive, VP of Engineering, Software Engineer) as well as internal functions (e.g., Director of Programs, VP of Sales). ## Sources 1. [unusual.vc](https://www.unusual.vc/our-story/) 2. [unusual.vc](https://www.unusual.vc/team/) 3. [unusual.vc](https://www.unusual.vc/founder-services/) 4. [jobs.lever.co/unusual](https://jobs.lever.co/unusual) 5. [linkedin.com/company/unusualventures](https://linkedin.com/company/unusualventures) ## Other roles at Unusual Ventures - [Founding Growth Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-growth-lead-unusual-ventures-new-york-kmsxm8vt2jf2) — New York, NY - [Account Executive - GovSignals](https://feeny.ai/job/account-executive-govsignals-unusual-ventures-washington-v5qmvvh121zc) — Washington, DC - [Operating Partner - Founder Services & Platform](https://feeny.ai/job/operating-partner-founder-services-platform-unusual-ventures-san-francisco-b7ffknpmaxhw) — San Francisco, CA - [Software Engineer, Growth - Rime Ai](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-growth-rime-ai-unusual-ventures-san-francisco-s5p7jbey688a) — San Francisco, CA - [Software Engineer, ML Serving - Rime Ai](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-ml-serving-rime-ai-unusual-ventures-san-francisco-ffg0j75y8aq4) — San Francisco, CA - [Founding Account Executive - Roboto AI](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-account-executive-roboto-ai-unusual-ventures-seattle-1z2tsdepcdgx) — Seattle, WA - [VP of Engineering - Rime.AI](https://feeny.ai/job/vp-of-engineering-rime-ai-unusual-ventures-san-francisco-8k6p2m5f0qrg) — San Francisco, CA - [Chief Executive Officer - Stealth Startup](https://feeny.ai/job/chief-executive-officer-stealth-startup-unusual-ventures-san-francisco-qcbz6pgkm8jx) — San Francisco, CA - [Founding Engineer - Miravoice](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-engineer-miravoice-unusual-ventures-san-francisco-y6b563tm643v) — San Francisco, CA