Head of Engineering

David AI is the first audio data research company. We bring an R&D approach to data–developing datasets with the same rigor AI labs bring to models. Our mission is to bring AI into the real world, and we believe audio is the gateway. Speech is versatile, accessible, and human—it fits naturally into everyday life. As audio AI advances and new use cases emerge, high-quality training data is the bottleneck. This is where David AI comes in.

David AI was founded in 2024 by a team of former Scale AI engineers and operators. In less than a year, we’ve brought on most FAANG companies and AI labs as customers. We recently raised a $50M Series B from Meritech, NVIDIA, Jack Altman (Alt Capital), Amplify Partners, First Round Capital and other Tier 1 investors.

Our team is sharp, humble, ambitious, and tight-knit. We’re looking for the best research, engineering, product, and operations minds to join us on our mission to push the frontier of audio AI.

At David AI, our engineers build the pipelines, platforms, and models that transform raw audio into high-signal data for leading AI labs and enterprises. We're a tight-knit team of product engineers, infrastructure specialists, and machine learning experts focused on building the world’s first audio data research company.

We move fast, own our work end-to-end, and ship to production daily. Our team designs real-time pipelines handling terabytes of speech data and deploys cutting-edge generative audio models.

As Head of Engineering, you'll be the technical backbone for our engineering team, leading execution across product, infrastructure, and AI systems. Partnering closely with the CTO, you'll co-develop the long-term technical vision and architecture, then translate it into a clear roadmap and operating cadence. You'll ensure delivery quality and nurture a collaborative, high-velocity engineering culture. This is a strategic role with broad autonomy where you'll shape how we build from day one.

• Lead the design and development of core tools that help users make sense of audio data for model training, working closely with researchers to continually improve how we collect data.

• Hire, structure, and mentor the engineering team while setting and upholding high performance standards.

• Oversee the delivery of full-stack features that thousands of users interact with daily.
  Build scalable data processing pipelines to extract actionable insights from terabytes of audio data every day.

• Rapidly iterate on research hypotheses in partnership with the Head of Research and Head of Operations - deploying interfaces to collect new data efficiently.

• 3+ years of engineering management experience.

• Experience leading technical organizations through rapid growth phases at high-growth startups or scale-ups.

• Strong background in distributed systems, real-time data processing, or machine learning infrastructure.

• A high degree of comfort digging into systems with deep technology stacks.

• A passion for problem solving and providing technical leadership to peers.

• Are a former founder.

• Next.js, TypeScript, TailwindCSS, Node.js, tRPC, PostgreSQL, AWS, Trigger.dev, WebRTC, FFmpeg.

• Unlimited PTO.

• Top-notch health, dental, and vision coverage with 100% coverage for most plans.

• FSA & HSA access.

• 401k access.

• Meals 2x daily through DoorDash + snacks and beverages available at the office.

• Unlimited company-sponsored Barry’s classes.