Audio Firmware Engineer

Hark • San Jose, CA

65d • $120,000 - $300,000

About The Position

We’re looking for an experienced Audio Firmware Engineer to develop and optimize next-generation embedded audio solutions on Android and SoC platforms. This role spans audio system bring-up, DSP pipeline integration, firmware optimization, and deployment of advanced audio/AI features for consumer devices. You will work across the software stack—from Android audio framework and HAL layers down to DSP—bringing production-quality audio experiences to market. This is hands-on work close to silicon, with direct impact on how every user experiences the product.

Requirements

• 3+ years of professional firmware or embedded audio development, ideally on consumer products that have shipped at scale
• Proficient with C/C++ in resource-constrained, real-time environments
• Familiar with Android audio architecture: Audio HAL, AudioFlinger, Audio Policy Manager, and TinyALSA/ALSA interfaces
• Hands-on experience with audio tooling and frameworks
• Comfort working across the full audio stack — kernel drivers, DSP firmware, HAL, framework — and debugging issues that span all of it
• Experience working alongside hardware engineers during board bring-up and reading schematics for audio subsystems

Nice To Haves

• Working knowledge of audio processing algorithms — dynamic range control, echo cancellation, noise suppression, beamforming, and similar
• DSP optimization experience, including fixed-point development, SIMD and VLIW.
• Tune audio quality and validate behavior across acoustic conditions
• Experience deploying machine learning models on embedded platforms, especially audio models running on DSP or NPU
• Background shipping voice-first or far-field audio products

Responsibilities

• Bring up audio on new hardware in the Android system — codecs, mics, speakers, routing, and low-level platform integration
• Design, implement, and manage audio use cases on SoC platforms across playback, capture, voice, and always-on listening paths
• Integrate and tune audio paths across the Android audio stack (HAL, AudioFlinger, Audio Policy Manager, TinyALSA/ALSA) and the underlying SoC audio frameworks
• Debug complex audio issues end-to-end using platform logs, working from kernel and DSP traces up through application-level symptoms
• Partner with the AI team to support audio-driven inference workloads (wake word, ASR, speech enhancement) within latency, power, and memory budgets
• Collaborate with hardware, acoustics, and product teams from prototype through production to ship audio that feels effortless to users

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed