Senior Backend Engineer @ Ava

Architect one of the most impactful projects of a generation: rethinking human communication, starting with the deaf & hard-of-hearingAva started as a mobile and cloud-based deep-learning system able to uniquely daisy chain mobile devices' microphones to accurately live transcribe any conversation. As users brought it to work and school en masse, the platform quickly added human curation through live professional transcribers, multiple languages, and web/desktop compatibility.
We're looking for an experienced Backend Developer to empower a sharp AI-driven engineering team and the architecture of our systems to reach the next level of scale.
If you've successfully built and scaled systems, including with other engineers, and can articulate business, product, and technical challenges to build a robust backend, and you are now looking to make a huge impact on society, this is an ideal position for you.
You're skilled with NodeJS, Express, TypeScript, AWS, GCP, etc.
You have a strong desire to empower and cooperate with different teams in different timezones, wanting to prove yourself as a great engineer and colleague.
You still want to grow your technical skills and expect to contribute technically in a meaningful way — this is a startup environment.
You've built quality products that have reached a large audience and have been involved in key decisions regarding building systems for large scale.
You can learn technologies quickly. To you, technologies are about tools and tradeoffs, not an ideology.
You care and can think deeply about the business implications of our engineering work. You understand the balance between craft, speed, and the bottom line.
You're a great and articulate communicator and teammate.
Bonus: You're very familiar with React, Vue.js, WebRTC, Audio processing.
Bonus: You've designed complex systems, including call centers and real-time peer-to-peer communications.
Bonus: MS in Computer Science from a top university.
Bonus: You've led or had a senior role within an engineering team before, in a high-growth environment, and helped build a strong engineering culture.
So... what will you do as a Senior Backend Engineer at Ava?You'll review & elaborate an ambitious but realistic backend roadmap, in collaboration with all stakeholders, particularly our AI Lead, Product Lead, and CTO - and keep it current.
You'll take meaningful ownership in solving complex challenges - around scalability, stack complexity across platforms, and necessary technologies to adopt.
You'll constantly keep an eye on the big picture to prepare the backend for new challenges that might come up.
You'll co-work with the Product team in the US and the AI team in the EU, quickly growing to 12+, using effective practices to help everyone deliver and you will be instrumental in building a great engineering culture.
You'll articulate our technological choices & approach alongside our CEO to investors and other key stakeholders.
What's special about this role?Meaningfully impact lives, at scale: How often do you hear about apps that make people cry with joy? The need for more social justice is strong, and it is a unique opportunity and privilege to meaningfully improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people - and yet to still be at the beginning of our mission!
Join us at an incredible time: We're well-funded and have hit product-market fit, which gives us a huge green field to work with. You'd join at the perfect time to shape our engineering culture, what we build, and how we grow, to create a more inclusive world.
Work with some of the best people in the world: We have an incredibly talented and passionate team that is a lot of fun to work with. We're still super small and have accomplished things that were thought impossible!
Tackle our most interesting and impactful problems: Our team is still small, and people wear many hats. We're facing challenges of scale and want to ace this next phase. This is your shot at shining and making a huge difference based on your experience and technical vision.
About AvaMissionWe want to radically improve how we humans communicate with each other. Our first step is to empower 450M deaf and hard-of-hearing people to a fully accessible world.
Every day, millions of people are excluded from conversations because they cannot hear well what others say. Our CEO Thibault grew up in a Deaf family and saw firsthand how the world was not accessible for them. Together with our CTO Skinner — deaf since age 2 — Thibault co-founded Ava to make live captioning of conversations as easy as turning on captions on TV.
Our small but fast-growing team has reinvented AI-based speech recognition technology to serve people who need it the most. We dream of a 24/7 accessible world, without any communication barrier.
In this pursuit, we're seeing how much communication skills are critical, yet very far from ideal, to unleash our collective potential. This is the last barrier to be lifted.
We believe that well-designed technology can help everyone communicate and connect better — much more effectively and authentically — so humanity can achieve the greatest things together.
We want to make the seemingly impossible equation of communication 1 + 1 = 3 work every time.
Life at AvaWe're a small team spread between two cities (San Francisco, where our Product & Growth teams are, and Paris — for our AI team). We care about making the world a much more connected place, and we believe it's best done by a highly creative & driven group of humans working in concert to change the current status quo. We value potential as much as experience and empathy as much as authenticity. Our culture is always evolving, and we believe new people can and should change how we operate and what we value.
Impact first. We care deeply about building AI technologies that make total accessibility possible while being economically sustainable, respectful of privacy, and beneficial to society.
Mountain movers. Our mission is lofty. It takes time, hard work, and perseverance to achieve meaningful impact. We're ready to persist with bold ideas to the very end.
1 & 1 = 3. No matter where you are from, we know that together we're stronger. We strive to reach authentic and impeccable communication to achieve our goals.
Beyond our bubble. We make Ava for people outside the strictly Silicon Valley bubble. We go beyond our own opinions and biases to listen to our users with deep empathy.
Growth-minded. There's no model for what we're building, as we're trying something never done before. To stay agile, we're committed to learning and growing every day, including giving each other authentic feedback.
This is a full-time position.
What benefits can I expect?
Great health, dental, and vision insurance.
New laptop/equipment of your choice.
Flexible vacation time & work hours.
Team retreats once a year — to meet everyone in the world! Past trips have been to Tahoe, NYC, and Bali.
ApplyThanks for making it here. You probably are really good at what you do and have many choices in front of you. If you are looking to grow your unique talents and leverage them for something truly meaningful while being in great company, you've come to the right place.

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