Research Engineer, Audio and Speech

Research Engineer Focused On Audio And SpeechDecagon is the leading conversational AI platform empowering every brand to deliver concierge customer experiences. Our technology enables industry-defining enterprises like Avis Budget Group, Block's Cash App and Square, Chime, Oura Health, and Hunter Douglas to deploy AI agents that power personalized, deeply satisfying interactions across voice, chat, email, SMS, and every other channel.We're building a future where customer experiences are being redefined from support tickets and hold music to faster resolutions, richer conversations, and deeper relationships. We're proud to be backed by world-class investors who share that vision, including a16z, Accel, Bain Capital Ventures, Coatue, and Index Ventures, along with many others.Our values — Just Get It Done, Invent What Customers Want, Winner's Mindset, and The Polymath Principle — shape how we work and grow as a team.The Research team develops the model and decision-making stack that powers Decagon's conversational agents for enterprise support. We research, adapt, and implement state-of-the-art techniques in model training, prompting, orchestration, and evaluation in order to make our agents more accurate, robust, and efficient in real-world deployments.Our goal is to push the frontier of applied conversational AI: agents that reliably understand nuanced intent, track long context, and take the right actions under uncertainty. We measure success the way customers feel it: higher resolution rates, better user satisfaction, and consistent behavior at scale.In this role, you will:Design and build next-generation agent harnesses optimized for streaming speech, turn-taking, interruptions, overlapping speech, and continuous interactionResearch and train multimodal and full-duplex models that jointly understand audio, reason, and generate speechImprove speech recognition, voice activity detection, endpointing, and speech generation across diverse speakers, environments, domains, and languagesBuild evaluations and use production calls to ship measurable improvements in accuracy, latency, naturalness, and task outcomesOptimize end-to-end inference for responsiveness, throughput, stability, and cost, partnering with Voice Platform and Infrastructure teams to deploy at scaleYour background looks something like this:2+ years of experience in speech, audio ML, multimodal ML, or production machine learningExperience developing or adapting autoregressive, diffusion, flow-matching, or codec-based speech modelsHands-on experience with streaming agent systems, low-latency inference, production model serving, and evaluation on real-world audioFluency in Python and a modern deep-learning framework such as PyTorch, with strong foundations in machine learning and signal processingA track record of taking research ideas from prototype to reliable, measurable production impactEven better if you have:Familiarity with speech-to-speech or full-duplex modelsExperience with telephony, multilingual speech, noisy-channel robustness, speaker adaptation, or expressive speech generationCompensation: $200K – $400K + Offers EquityBenefits: We proudly offer the following benefits for our full-time employees:Medical, Dental, and Vision benefits for you and your familyLife Insurance and Disability BenefitsRetirement Plan (e.g., 401K, pension)Parental LeaveFertility and family building benefits through CarrotMonthly stipend to support your wellness, lifestyle, and work-life balanceDaily lunches and snacks in the office to keep you at your bestTake what you need vacation policy (subject to local requirements; UK employees receive 25 days of statutory leave)These benefits are described in more detail in Decagon's policies, may vary by location, and can change at any time according to applicable compensation and benefits plans.