Rime is a foundation modeling company that builds voice AI for enterprises running customer experiences at scale. Our models are purpose-built for high-volume conversational deployments, engineered for the accuracy, performance, and deployment flexibility that production environments actually demand.
We started from a different premise than the rest of the field: build voice AI for human connection, not slop. Before we trained a single model, we built our own corpus: full-duplex, studio-quality conversational speech of normal people, recorded and annotated by linguists. It's why our models are unparalleled in naturalism, and it's why enterprises pick Rime when pilots need to make it to production.
Role OverviewWe're hiring a generalist Software Engineer to work across Rime's stack — platform APIs, systems, infrastructure, and wherever the company needs to move next. Your exact focus will evolve by design: we're building toward a next-generation architecture (gRPC-first, heterogeneous model serving, bidirectional streaming), and we need engineers who can operate across layers rather than stay confined to one. If you have strong fundamentals, a bias for clean interfaces, and the instinct to understand systems end-to-end, this role is for you.
What You'll Own
Platform APIs: authentication, billing, account management, and the surface that keeps the business running.
Feature work across the stack — supporting the rollout of the next generation of our tts and end-to-end speech models.
Integration and migration work as Rime evolves: token-based authentication, new billing and metering providers.
Maintenance and hardening of the current TTS API stack and assisting in its evolution.
Realtime, low-latency, horizontally scalable streaming speech infrastructure.
What we're looking for
5+ years of IC engineering experience with strong backend fundamentals.
Experience with at least one low level language: C++, Rust, Go.
Systems-level thinking: you understand what's happening at the network, storage, and runtime layers, not just the application layer.
You build clean interfaces and design for loose coupling; you don't create systems only you can debug. Bias towards codification and reproducibility.
Comfortable moving through an unfamiliar codebase and shipping without extensive hand-holding.
Strong async written communication — we're global and the written word is how work gets done.
Bonus points
Experience integrating 3rd party API’s, such as payments, monitoring, and CRMs.
Experience with gRPC or other bidirectional binary streaming protocols.
Experience with multilingual monorepos where you pick the best language out of merit more than personal experience.
Experience with cloud infrastructure.
Experience at a small startup where the scope of your role was broad and undefined.
Comfort working within ML systems
Why Join Rime
Work across a real stack with real production stakes — not a feature team inside a large org.
Direct influence on engineering decisions at a formative company stage.
Small, high-ownership team with no layers between you and the work.
Meaningful equity upside.
High ownership, high standards, low bureaucracy.
SF / Bay Area.
At Rime, we...
Are outliers
Cut through the hype to focus on the craft
Move fast with agency and freedom
Maintain a growth mindset, finding joy in the struggle
Do the right things, knowing that it'll lead to making money
Skills Required
- 5+ years of individual contributor engineering experience
- Experience with at least one low-level language (C++, Rust, Go)
- Systems-level understanding of network, storage, and runtime layers
- Ability to design clean interfaces and loose-coupled systems
- Comfort navigating unfamiliar codebases and shipping with little hand-holding
- Strong asynchronous written communication skills
- Experience integrating third-party APIs (payments, monitoring, CRMs)
- Experience with gRPC or other bidirectional binary streaming protocols
- Experience with multilingual monorepos
- Experience with cloud infrastructure
- Experience at a small startup with broad, undefined scope
- Comfort working within ML systems
What We Do
Unusual Ventures is raising the bar for what founders should expect from their venture investors. We enable startups with the hands on support and expertise they need to be successful during their early stage journey. Unusual Ventures is an early-stage firm that invests in both enterprise and consumer startups.
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