Audio Transducer Design Engineer

Meta Platforms, Inc.•Sunnyvale, CA

35d

About The Position

The Meta Reality Labs Wearable Audio Technology Team (WATT) cares and designs for end-users to be frictionless and naturally connected with their loved ones in compelling device form factors where sound is a vital facet. As an Audio Transducer Design Engineer you will have a high degree of device architectural and audio transducer design and integration influence. Together with your colleagues, you drive the development of the next cutting-edge social-fist hardware devices across wearable audio only, smart, display and AR Glasses. You will work in a vibrant audio community on all aspects of audio device and sub-system architecture, design and development. You engage from early simulation-driven concept work where we guide you to leverage and deploy limitless high performance compute to virtually down-select and quickly build-up successful experimental proof-of-concept prototypes. On the way to mass production, you fully negotiate device integration, optimize transducer components and iterate with grit to pass our rigorous acoustic, power consumption, reliability, cost and reuse requirements. You employ systematic, data driven virtual and experimental design methods, objective and subjective audio evaluation and a commonsense attitude to complex engineering challenges. You know when the time is to hold the line - and when to let go moving forward. The best fit for the role will be a gregarious communicator who has the capacity to describe audio architecture and transducers and accompanying acoustic passive component challenges and solutions in a clear and concise manner. You frame qualitative experiences to quantitative data during cross-functional dialogs to balance a given form factor with acoustic performance, reliability, power consumption and cost. WATT has comprehensive acoustic facilities, equipment, working methods and overall ownership of the full device acoustic performance from early-stage architectural concepts to mass production.

Requirements

Bachelors Degree in Acoustics, Physics, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering or relevant technical field or equivalent practical experience
6+ years of experience working with micro-speakers, full-range, mid-range, woofer or tweeter transducers
3+ years of experience working cross-functionally on consumer hardware products with understanding of assembly techniques, audio materials and transducer design methods
Proficiency in failure analysis (both hands-on and analyzing data)

Nice To Haves

M.Sc.EE, M.Sc.ME or Ph.D. in Acoustics, Physics or equivalent
Audio architectural and design experience
Avid user of COMSOLs linear (harmonic) and non-linear (transient) Acoustic, AC/DC and Structural modules

Responsibilities

Primary cross-functional interface with PD/ID/EE/GSM/TPM/EPM/etc. and internal interface with our audio tuners and audio algorithm and perceptual developers
You will design custom moving coil and MEMS speakers and optimize vendor components and sub-components for best cost, acoustic (sensitivity/efficiency & distortion), power and reliability performance related to their enclosures, ports, passive radiators, grills, acoustic meshes dictated by the form factor
Present concise and coherent observations, conclusions and recommendations of high-fidelity virtual simulations and experimental measurements to establish performance targets and concepts to gaining cross-functional and leadership buy-in
Multi-physic linear and non-linear harmonic and transient simulations of transducers in device form factor and sub-components optimization (suspensions and motors systems) using fast moving lumped-parameter tools (MicroCap, PSpice, MATLAB, etc.) in tandem with advanced continuous-parameter FEA/BEA-tools (COMSOL, ANSYS, Abaqus, etc.)
Experimentally benchmark, characterize and verify moving coil and MEMS transducer and performance using industry standard tools (SoundCheck, Audio Precision, Klippel R&D, SCN and NFS, Keyence/Polytec Scanning lasers, acoustic cameras, etc.)
Facilitate our manufacturing partners factory test design and test specifications of transducers in their device intended enclosures
Building and calibrating non-linear material models based on advanced audio specific dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA)
Support bring up and audit new transducer and devices based on Engineering Requirement Specifications (ERS)
Evaluate, develop and design-in new materials and new technologies
Engineer who involves their head, heart and hands in the development process and enjoys collaborating to identify and close design issues