{"id":713,"url":"https://alion.io/job/hark-audio-firmware-engineer","title":"Audio Firmware Engineer","company":{"id":764,"name":"Hark","domain":"hark.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/hark","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":95,"open_postings":45,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":113,"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"}},"role":"Hardware","role_family":"Hardware","seniority":"senior","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Jose, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":120000,"max":300000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":300000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":5,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Multimodal AI","optional":false},{"name":"Speech Recognition","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-05-09T20:26:39Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-29","last_verified_at":"2026-10-18T00:50:05Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":161,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":1,"flags":["company_stale"],"days_open":160},"description":"About Hark\nHark is an artificial intelligence company building advanced, personalized intelligence. One that is proactive, multimodal, and capable of interacting with the world through speech, text, vision, and persistent memory.\nWe're pairing that intelligence with next-generation hardware to create a universal interface between humans and machines. While today's AI largely operates through chat boxes and decade-old devices, Hark is focused on what comes next: agentic systems that interact naturally with people and the real world.\nTo get there, we're developing multimodal models and next-generation AI hardware together - designed from the ground up as a single, unified interface for a new era of intelligent systems.\nAbout the Role \nWe’re looking for an experienced Audio Firmware Engineer to develop and optimize embedded audio solutions on Hark’s next-gen AI device. This role spans audio system bring-up, DSP algorithms development, integration and optimization, and deployment of advanced audio/AI features for consumer devices. The ideal candidate should be comfortable developing, integrating, debugging, tuning, and validating audio algorithms on an embedded production platform.\nResponsibilities\nBring up audio processing stack on new hardware, drive implementation and integrations of audio processing pipeline\nDebug complex audio issues end-to-end using platform logs, working from kernel and DSP traces up through application-level symptoms\nPartner with the AI team to support audio-driven inference workloads (wake word, ASR, speech enhancement) within latency, power, and memory budgets\nCollaborate with hardware, acoustics, and product teams from prototype through production to ship audio that feels effortless to users\nRequirements\n5+ years of professional firmware or embedded audio development, ideally on consumer products that have shipped at scale\nExperience with core Audio DSP algorithms and their implementations, including AEC, Beamforming, NR, AGC, VAD, DoA estimation etc.\nExperience with post processing pipelines including Audio mixing/routing, Ducking, Channel Mapping, EQ, filtering and sample rate conversion etc.\nProficient with C/C++ in resource-constrained, real-time environments\nStrong hands-on development experience with speech and microphone-array signal processing algorithms\nBonus Qualifications\nExperience with AudioReach framework and Hexagon DSP ISA\nDSP optimization experience, including fixed-point development, SIMD and VLIW.\nExperience working alongside hardware engineers during board bring-up and reading schematics for audio subsystems\nExperience deploying machine learning models on embedded platforms, especially audio models running on DSP or NPU\nBackground shipping voice-first or far-field audio products\nCompensation\nThe US base salary range for this full-time position is between $120,000 - $300,000 annually.\nThe pay offered for this position may vary based on several individual factors, including job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The total compensation package may also include additional components/benefits depending on the specific role. This information will be shared if an employment offer is extended.","description_format":"text","description_chars":3194,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":5,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":[],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-05-09T20:26:39Z"},{"event":"close","at":"2026-09-20T20:24:07Z"},{"event":"reopen","at":"2026-09-30T03:40:46Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":30,"band":"fade","label":"Fading","p_open":1,"p_active":0.69,"p_room":0.44,"age_days":160,"expected_fill_days":113,"reasons":["conf:0","velocity","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":300000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/hark-audio-firmware-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/hark-audio-firmware-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-18T01:50:50Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":3006,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-19T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":764},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=764"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fhark-audio-firmware-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fhark-audio-firmware-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fhark-audio-firmware-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/hark-audio-firmware-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fhark-audio-firmware-engineer"}]}