Audio Firmware Engineer
Hark Open · verified Oct 24, 2026 At a glance
Mid-level Embedded & Firmware role at Hark. San Jose · $120,000–$300,000 base.
techroles summary, based on the employer's posting.
What you'll do
- Bring up the audio stack on new hardware and connect the processing stages into a working pipeline
- Trace audio failures from kernel and DSP logs through to application behavior, then debug the full path
- Fit wake-word, speech-recognition and enhancement workloads within latency, power and memory limits
- Work with hardware, acoustics and product teams to take audio from prototype through production
What you bring
- At least five years building firmware or embedded audio, ideally for consumer products shipped at scale
- Hands-on experience implementing audio DSP such as echo cancellation, beamforming or noise reduction
- Working knowledge of audio routing and post-processing, including mixing, equalization or sample-rate conversion
- Strong C/C++ skills in real-time systems with limited computing resources
- Practical speech and microphone-array signal-processing development experience
Who this fits
This mid-level role suits an engineer who can develop, integrate, debug, tune and validate audio algorithms on an embedded production platform. The work spans hardware bring-up, signal processing and AI audio workloads, with collaboration across hardware, acoustics, product and AI teams. The role is based in San Jose.
From the employer
About Hark
Hark is an artificial intelligence company building advanced, personalized intelligence. One that is proactive, multimodal, and capable of interacting with the world through speech, text, vision, and persistent memory.
We're pairing that intelligence with next-generation hardware to create a universal interface between humans and machines. While today's AI largely operates through chat boxes and decade-old devices, Hark is focused on what comes next: agentic systems that interact naturally with people and the real world.
To get there, we're developing multimodal models and next-generation AI hardware together - designed from the ground up as a single, unified interface for a new era of intelligent systems.
About the Role
We’re looking for an experienced Audio Firmware Engineer to develop and optimize embedded audio solutions on Hark’s next-gen AI device. This role spans audio system bring-up, DSP algorithms development, integration and optimization, and deployment of advanced audio/AI features for consumer devices. The ideal candidate should be comfortable developing, integrating, debugging, tuning, and validating audio algorithms on an embedded production platform.
Responsibilities
- Bring up audio processing stack on new hardware, drive implementation and integrations of audio processing pipeline
- 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
Requirements
- 5+ years of professional firmware or embedded audio development, ideally on consumer products that have shipped at scale
- Experience with core Audio DSP algorithms and their implementations, including AEC, Beamforming, NR, AGC, VAD, DoA estimation etc.
- Experience with post processing pipelines including Audio mixing/routing, Ducking, Channel Mapping, EQ, filtering and sample rate conversion etc.
- Proficient with C/C++ in resource-constrained, real-time environments
- Strong hands-on development experience with speech and microphone-array signal processing algorithms
Bonus Qualifications
- Experience with AudioReach framework and Hexagon DSP ISA
- DSP optimization experience, including fixed-point development, SIMD and VLIW.
- Experience working alongside hardware engineers during board bring-up and reading schematics for audio subsystems
- 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
Compensation
The US base salary range for this full-time position is between $120,000 - $300,000 annually.
The pay offered for this position may vary based on several individual factors, including job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The total compensation package may also include additional components/benefits depending on the specific role. This information will be shared if an employment offer is extended.
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