Software Development Engineer

Location: Cambridge, UK

Contact: careers@speechmatics.com

Background

Speechmatics is a leader in automatic speech recognition (ASR). Using proprietary technology, we have built one of the most accurate ASR systems in the world, with a vision to power a voice-enabled economy. We are already working in the world at a time when the global economy is actively adopting all types of speech-related technologies. In developing our technology we combine our years of experience, the latest developments in the field and our own focus on cutting-edge research to produce a world-class service.

In the office, we pride ourselves on a relaxed but productive environment whilst we stay in touch with the field by attending both academic and commercial conferences and have fun together with regular team events (in the past we have been punting, go-karting, attended a cooking workshop and played bubble football...).

We are expanding rapidly and are seeking more people in the coming months to help us keep pushing the boundaries of speech recognition. This is an opportunity to join a high growth team and form a major part of its future direction.

The Opportunity

You will be joining the ‘Languages’ team within Speechmatics, focussing on two key goals. We maintain and develop Auto-Auto, our ground-breaking framework to support the building of languages for use in ASR. And we use it to build new language models.

We are looking for an experienced Software Development Engineer to join us. As a member of the team, you will be working on the development, maintenance and expansion of our pipeline, and participating in building and solving the challenges of a growing language portfolio. You will have significant influence on implementing or integrating new features, drive the system architecture, and spearhead the best practices that enable a quality product.

Auto-Auto is core to our business and by working on it you will have a chance to build something that will be used in businesses and homes worldwide. Working in a rapidly growing start-up also means opportunities to contribute to other projects, depending on the candidate’s background and skills.

If you are a talented, detail-oriented engineer with a solid software development foundation and a commitment to deliver the best possible technology solutions, then we want to hear from you!

Key Responsibilities

• Delivering high quality, maintainable and robust code on time, as part of a team.

• Executing projects and developing against an outlined design.

• Developing pragmatic solutions and building flexible systems without over-engineering.

• Involvement at all stages of the software development cycle, including designing and developing new architectural systems and improvements, and QA processes.

• Participation in estimation and sprint planning in an agile environment.

• Participation in delivering new language models for the ASR engine.

• Working closely with other technical teams and product team to deliver on the company’s technical vision.

Experience

Essential

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field.

• Professional experience in software development.

• Computer Science fundamentals in object-oriented design, data structures, algorithm design, problem solving, and complexity analysis.

• Knowledge of professional software engineering practices & best practices for the full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, and operations.

• Excellent Python skills.

• Good Linux skills.

• Experience of working within a team to deliver and run high quality systems.

Desirable

• Master's degree in Computer Science or related field.

• Demonstrable professional experience in software development.

• Proficiency in C and C++ (ideally with strong STL and Boost experience).

• Strong skills and experience in cloud-based software development, preferably AWS:

  • Working with distributed and/or clustered systems.

  • Building and running horizontally scaling architectures.

  • Using cloud-based queueing, messaging, monitoring and storage techniques.

• Experience in flow-based programming.

• Familiarity with statistical models and data mining algorithms.

• Analytical with a data-driven approach to making decisions and attention to detail.

• Previous experience with Natural Language Processing techniques.

• Comfortable collaborating with teams with very different technical skills, and non-technical teams.

Salary

We offer a competitive salary, bonus scheme, pension contribution matching (up to 5%) and a generous EMI share option scheme. We also have several additional benefits including holiday purchase, massages, fully stocked beer fridge, Cyclescheme, fruit boxes and many more.