Ambient Listening Engineer

DRFIRST COM INC• US,

10d•$140,000 - $160,000•Remote

About The Position

DrFirst is seeking an Ambient Listening Engineer to join its Provider Solutions, eRx Retail team. The role builds technology for reliably capturing, transcribing, and structuring spoken conversations, including provider-patient encounters, so information can move seamlessly into clinical workflows. It combines real-time audio pipelines, speech and language models, and clinical workflow development. The position emphasizes hands-on implementation, shipping working software, and iterating quickly with a small, collaborative team. The engineer will develop ambient audio capture and streaming pipelines, integrate speech and language technologies, and create services that transform audio into clinical notes, summaries, and structured data. They will work with product, clinical informatics, and design partners; monitor and improve production reliability, latency, and accuracy; and handle audio and derived data with privacy and security requirements in mind. The role also involves evaluating third-party and open-source models, participating in code reviews and design discussions, and joining the on-call rotation for owned services. DrFirst describes itself as a Remote-First company. The stated physical requirements are 90% desk work and 10% remote travel to client sites, conferences, or internal team meetings.

Requirements

At least 5 years of professional software engineering experience, including a track record of shipping and operating production systems end to end.
Hands-on experience with real-time or streaming audio and data pipelines, such as WebRTC, gRPC streaming, or Kafka.
Practical experience with speech-to-text, NLP, or applied machine-learning models, including integrating third-party APIs or fine-tuning models.
Strong backend engineering skills in a language such as Python, Go, or Java, and comfort working across the stack when needed.
Preference for hands-on building and prototyping over focusing solely on architecture or process.
Experience working in a small, fast-moving team where roles overlap and team members contribute beyond a narrow job description.
Familiarity with cloud infrastructure such as AWS, Azure, or GCP, and containerized deployment such as Docker or Kubernetes.
Clear written and verbal communication skills and comfort collaborating directly with clinical or non-technical stakeholders.

Nice To Haves

Experience in healthcare technology, clinical documentation, or ambient/voice AI products.
Familiarity with HIPAA, SOC 2, or other healthcare and security compliance frameworks.
Experience with LLM-based summarization or structured data extraction from unstructured text.
Background in audio signal processing or acoustics.

Responsibilities

Design, build, and maintain real-time and near-real-time ambient audio capture and streaming pipelines, from device and microphone input through transcription and downstream processing.
Integrate and fine-tune speech-to-text, speaker diarization, and noise-suppression models for noisy, multi-speaker clinical environments.
Build services and APIs that turn ambient audio into structured, actionable output such as clinical notes, summaries, or discrete data elements for downstream systems.
Partner with product, clinical informatics, and design to translate workflow problems into working prototypes.
Own and continuously improve production reliability, latency, and accuracy metrics for the ambient listening pipeline.
Implement privacy- and security-conscious handling of audio and derived data in line with HIPAA and other applicable regulatory requirements.
Evaluate and integrate third-party and open-source speech and LLM models, balancing build-versus-buy tradeoffs.
Participate in code reviews, design discussions, and the on-call rotation for owned services.

Benefits

Competitive compensation with a base salary of $140,000–$160,000; exact compensation may vary based on skills and experience.
Eligibility for a discretionary performance-based bonus.
Medical, dental, and vision insurance.
401(k) eligibility after 3 months of employment, with a 50% company match on the first 5% of salary contributed and a 3-year vesting schedule.
HSA for eligible employees enrolled in the HDHP, with company contributions up to $500 annually for individual coverage and $1,000 for family coverage.
100% company-paid short- and long-term disability, AD&D, and group life insurance.
Accrued annual PTO of 18 days during the first 3 years of service, increasing thereafter, and 7 paid holidays.
Employee Assistance Program.
Continuing education funds up to $1,500 annually for eligible programs after 1 year of service.
Voluntary benefits including FSA, hospital indemnity, accident, and critical illness insurance.