Senior Research Engineer - Voice

Reposted 4 Days Ago
Be an Early Applicant
27 Locations
Remote
Senior level
Artificial Intelligence
The Role
Develop and optimize real-time generative speech and voice synthesis systems. Work on streaming and speech-to-speech models, conditioning inputs (emotion, prosody, speaker control), post-training optimizations (quantization, pruning, distillation), integrate novel architectures (neural codecs, diffusion, flow-matching), and define latency-aware evaluation metrics for production deployment.
Summary Generated by Built In

Synthesia is the world’s leading AI video platform for business, used by over 90% of the Fortune 100. Founded in 2017, the company is headquartered in London, with offices and teams across Europe and the US.

As AI continues to shape the way we live and work, Synthesia develops products to enhance visual communication and enterprise skill development, helping people work better and stay at the center of successful organizations.

Following our recent Series E funding round, where we raised $200 million, our valuation stands at $4 billion. Our total funding exceeds $530 million from premier investors including Accel, NVentures (Nvidia's VC arm), Kleiner Perkins, GV, and Evantic Capital, alongside the founders and operators of Stripe, Datadog, Miro, and Webflow.

What you'll do at Synthesia

As a Research Engineer you will join a team of 40+ Researchers and Engineers within the R&D Department working on cutting-edge challenges in the Generative AI space, with a focus on creating high-quality, expressive and real-time synthetic voices. Within the team you’ll have the opportunity to work on the applied side of our research efforts and directly impact our solutions that are used worldwide by over 60,000 businesses.

If you are an expert in ML, LLMs, speech generation, conversational models, this is your chance to make a global impact. You will join our Audio Post-Training Team, which works on generative speech and voice synthesis, ensuring our in-house voice models reach production-level quality, speed, and robustness. Typical projects include:

  • Develop and evaluate streaming and speech-to-speech systems, enabling low-latency, interactive voice synthesis.

  • Adapt models for new conditioning inputs (emotion, speed, prosody, speaker control, etc.).

  • Implement post-training optimization techniques (quantization, pruning, distillation) to improve efficiency and latency in real-time speech generation.

  • Integrate and test novel architectures, such as neural codecs, diffusion, or flow-matching models, to enhance realism and responsiveness.

  • Contribute to defining new evaluation metrics for conversational speech, including latency-aware and online MOS prediction systems.

  • Stay updated with the latest research in audio diffusion, autoregressive models, neural codecs, and multimodal LLMs.

  • Apply DPO (Direct Preference Optimization) and distillation to fine-tune large-scale speech models.

What we're looking for:

  • Strong understanding of generative modeling, ideally applied to sequential or multimodal data.

  • Hands-on experience with large language models (LLMs) or similar transformer-based architectures.

  • High proficiency in PyTorch, including experience with distributed training and model optimization.

  • Solid grasp of time-series modeling and tokenization, preferably in the context of audio or speech.

  • Demonstrated ability to prototype quickly, test hypotheses, and iterate efficiently.

  • Proven experience in training deep learning models end-to-end, from data preparation to evaluation.

  • Strong general software engineering skills, enabling contributions to a large, shared research infrastructure.

Nice to have experience:

  • Experience with real-time or streaming architectures is a big plus.

  • Familiarity with state-of-the-art architectures in audio and speech generation (e.g., diffusion models, neural codecs, flow-matching models, autoregressive decoders).

  • Experience with speech-to-speech or text-to-speech (TTS) systems.

  • Evidence of original research contributions, such as publications or open-source work in top-tier venues (e.g., ICASSP, Interspeech, NeurIPS, ICML).

Skills Required

  • Strong understanding of generative modeling applied to sequential or multimodal data
  • Hands-on experience with large language models or transformer-based architectures
  • High proficiency in PyTorch, including distributed training and model optimization
  • Solid grasp of time-series modeling and tokenization, preferably for audio or speech
  • Demonstrated ability to prototype quickly, test hypotheses, and iterate efficiently
  • Proven experience training deep learning models end-to-end, from data preparation to evaluation
  • Strong general software engineering skills to contribute to shared research infrastructure
  • Experience with real-time or streaming architectures
  • Familiarity with state-of-the-art audio/speech architectures (diffusion, neural codecs, flow-matching, autoregressive)
  • Experience with speech-to-speech or text-to-speech (TTS) systems
  • Evidence of original research contributions (publications or open-source)

Synthesia Compensation & Benefits Highlights

The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Synthesia and has not been reviewed or approved by Synthesia.

  • Leave & Time Off Breadth Leave benefits are positioned as generous, including substantial annual leave plus public holidays and an additional long-tenure sabbatical with a cash award. Flexible working hours and hybrid/remote arrangements further strengthen perceived time-off and flexibility value.
  • Healthcare Strength Health coverage is described as robust, including private medical insurance with mental health support and dental/vision coverage. Added features like cashback options and gym discounts extend the package beyond basic medical coverage.
  • Equity Value & Accessibility Equity is framed as a meaningful part of total rewards through a generous stock options plan and a recent employee liquidity event tied to a major funding round. This can materially improve the perceived value and accessibility of long-term incentives versus options that remain purely paper value.

Synthesia Insights

Am I A Good Fit?
beta
Get Personalized Job Insights.
Our AI-powered fit analysis compares your resume with a job listing so you know if your skills & experience align.

The Company
HQ: London
428 Employees
Year Founded: 2017

What We Do

Synthesia is the #1 rated AI video communications platform. Thousands of companies use it to create videos in 140 languages, saving up to 80% of their time and budget. 👉 Trusted by Zoom, Xerox, Teleperformance, Amazon and mor

Similar Jobs

Deepgram Logo Deepgram

Account Executive

Artificial Intelligence • Machine Learning • Natural Language Processing • Software • Conversational AI
In-Office or Remote
28 Locations
150 Employees

Deepgram Logo Deepgram

Account Executive

Artificial Intelligence • Machine Learning • Natural Language Processing • Software • Conversational AI
Remote
27 Locations
150 Employees

CodePath.org Logo CodePath.org

Senior Product Designer

Edtech • Social Impact
Easy Apply
Remote
37 Locations
55 Employees
148K-190K Annually
Easy Apply
Remote
37 Locations
55 Employees
140K-178K Annually

Similar Companies Hiring

Legora Thumbnail
Artificial Intelligence • Legal Tech • Software
Chicago, Illinois
700 Employees
Hanover Park Thumbnail
Artificial Intelligence • Fintech • Software • Financial Services
New York, New York
42 Employees
Onshore Thumbnail
Artificial Intelligence • Fintech • Software • Financial Services
New York, New York
60 Employees

Sign up now Access later

Create Free Account

Please log in or sign up to report this job.

Create Free Account