Backend Engineer - Inference Services

Company Overview

Deepgram is the leading platform underpinning the emerging 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 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 Series C led by global investors, Deepgram has processed over 50,000 years of audio and transcribed more than 1 trillion words.

Company Operating Rhythm

At Deepgram, we expect an AI-first mindset—AI use and comfort are core to how we operate, innovate, and measure performance. Every team member actively uses, experiments with, and builds AI tools into their everyday work.

We move at the pace of AI. Change is rapid, and your day-to-day work will evolve quickly. This role requires flexibility, constant learning, and a desire to experiment rather than a traditional, prescriptive 9-to-5 environment.

Opportunity

As a Backend Software Engineer on the Engine team, you will lead the design and implementation of Deepgram’s products. You will design and implement secure, robust, and scalable services for speech processing, efficient distributed compute orchestration, and optimized scheduling. You will be a critical voice in Deepgram’s Product and Engineering teams, driving high-impact products from start to finish.

Key Responsibilities

• Improve core inference services in networking, speech processing, audio transcoding, and latency/memory optimization.
• Develop processes for measuring, building, and optimizing services to maximize system performance.
• Debug complex system issues involving networking, scheduling, and high-performance computing interactions.
• Customize backend services rapidly to support specific customer needs.
• Partner with Product to design and implement new services, features, and products end to end.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of industry experience in a software engineering role.
• Strong programming experience in Rust (or C / C++), paired with competence in Python.
• Excellent written and verbal communication and organizational skills.
• Comprehensive experience with UNIX-style systems.
• Deep understanding of version control, preferably Git.

Nice to Have

• Experience with modern machine learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch) or implementation knowledge of architectures like CNNs, RNNs, and transformers.
• Experience with audio processing technologies.