Audio Systems Engineer

Antare Technology; Greater London; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A forward-thinking technology startup in London is looking for an Audio Systems Engineer to lead the audio subsystem for innovative products. You will work on audio processing, DSP, and cloud pipelines, requiring strong skills in C/C++, communications, and team collaboration. The position offers a unique opportunity to shape the product roadmap, with a competitive salary, equity options, and a dynamic team environment. If you’re passionate about audio technology and eager to contribute to groundbreaking solutions, we want to hear from you.

Benefits

Competitive salary

Equity options

Healthcare

Qualifications

• Proven experience shipping embedded audio systems into production.
• Strong fundamentals in audio/DSP with hands-on tuning experience.
• Strong coding skills in C/C++ under real-time constraints.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced startup environment.
• Excellent communication and collaboration abilities.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement a robust end-to-end audio pipeline.
• Implement and tune DSP components under resource constraints.
• Define metrics for performance evaluation and regression testing.
• Debug audio issues across the full stack.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to make trade-offs.

Skills

Embedded audio systems experience

Audio/DSP fundamentals

C/C++ programming

Problem-solving skills

Communication and collaboration

Python for analysis

Tools

DSP components

Cloud pipelines (AWS)

Job description

Antare - Audio Systems Engineer (Embedded DSP / Audio ML)

About Antare

Do you want to join the (very) early stages of a technology company that’s got huge ambition and vision, as well as the backing to make it happen? At Antare, we’re utilising our industry knowledge to create innovative products that we believe will disrupt the market. This is a complete greenfield opportunity to be part of a product roadmap from day one, the rest remains in stealth.

The team founded Antare in 2024 comprising product designers and engineers – some of whom have worked together for over 15 years. Together, the companies we have built have been collectively acquired for billions of dollars: we have a genuine level of success under our belts that you could help to contribute to. Today, we’re a small, hands‑on team spanning product design, finance, hardware, and software engineering.

What we can offer you

This is a rare chance to join a startup at the very beginning – where your curiosity, ideas, and input will directly influence the product roadmap. You’ll work closely with a small, experienced team building and shipping real systems from day one.

You’ll have a high degree of ownership and autonomy, and you’ll collaborate across hardware, embedded, cloud, and machine learning. It’s a high‑trust, low‑ego environment where we move quickly, prototype often, and make pragmatic trade‑offs to get to production.

We also use modern tooling (including AI‑assisted workflows) to stay focused and iterate fast and you’ll help shape the engineering foundations as we scale.

Role Overview

As an Audio Systems Engineer, you’ll own the end‑to‑end audio subsystem for a compact, low‑power edge device and its supporting cloud pipelines. From real‑time capture and on‑device DSP through our cloud audio processing pipeline. You’ll deliver robust performance in noisy, unpredictable environments, balancing latency, compute, quality, and power.

This role spans embedded systems, signal processing, and applied ML. We don’t expect you to be world‑class in every area, we care most about a drive to create brilliant products that end users love, with strong technical judgement, and the ability to lead the subsystem end‑to‑end with support from the team.

Some of the technologies we use, and day‑to‑day tasks may include developing with:

• Audio processing DSP blocks such as filtering, AGC/DRC, noise suppression, VAD, and echo control
• Implementation of audio algorithms in resource constrained environments
• Audio codecs and streaming/recording pipelines (e.g., Opus/AAC; RTP/WebRTC‑like patterns)
• Python for analysis, evaluation tooling, and data exploration
• Cloud pipelines for audio post‑processing and ML integration (AWS or similar)

What we’re looking for

• Proven experience shipping embedded audio systems (or major audio subsystems) into production. (e.g. embedded device, comms, consumer hardware, wearables, robotics, automotive, etc.)
• Strong fundamentals in audio/DSP and hands‑on tuning experience (e.g. AGC/DRC, filters, noise suppression; AEC/beamforming are a plus).
• Strong coding skills in C/C++ and comfort working with real‑time and performance constraints.
• Strong problem‑solving skills and ability to work in a fast‑paced startup environment.
• Excellent communication and collaboration abilities. You can work effectively with hardware, embedded, and ML/cloud engineers.
• Practical experience using Python or similar for analysis, benchmarking, and evaluation tooling.

Bonus points if you have:

• Hardware‑adjacent experience (e.g., I2S, ADC/DAC, DMA, SPI/I2C/UART, oscilloscopes/logic analysers).
• Microphone/speaker component selection or acoustic/mechanical experience (placement constraints, enclosure effects, environmental robustness).
• Experience with audio measurement techniques and designing repeatable evaluation methodologies.
• Experience with always‑on / low‑power detection or audio classification (e.g., VAD, keyword spotting, event detection).
• Familiarity with ML frameworks (PyTorch/TensorFlow) and the realities of deploying models into production pipelines.
• Experience with audio frameworks/libraries (GStreamer, WebRTC audio processing, SpeexDSP, RNNoise‑like approaches).

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and tune a robust end‑to‑end audio pipeline that performs reliably in noisy real‑world environments.
• Implement and tune DSP components under tight resource constraints (e.g., filtering, AGC/DRC, noise suppression, VAD, echo control).
• Define objective metrics and build repeatable evaluation and regression testing harnesses (lab + field) to measure and improve performance over time.
• Debug audio issues across the full stack using instrumentation, logs, profiling, and (where helpful) lab equipment.
• Work with cloud/ML engineers to enable audio‑based intelligence via offline and online processing pipelines.
• Collaborate with cross‑functional teams to make pragmatic trade‑offs across quality, latency, compute, power, and system complexity.
• Contribute to a culture of continuous improvement: code review, documentation, engineering best practices, and design discussions.

Ideally, you’ll have experience with some of the technologies we use. That said, we don’t expect you to know everything already. We care most about strong fundamentals, good judgement, and a track record of shipping.

We believe that diverse perspectives make better products, and we strongly encourage people from underrepresented backgrounds in tech to apply. If you’re unsure whether you meet every requirement, please still reach out, we’d love to hear from you.

Why Antare

Join Antare in London and contribute to a team that’s creating the next generation of innovative products. We offer a competitive salary, equity options, and healthcare, along with the opportunity to build a product that makes a real impact.

While we offer some flexibility, we’re an in‑person team (4 days per week) – at this stage of the company, we’ve found that collaboration and ideation happen faster and more naturally when we’re in the same room.