# Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Voice Agents

**Company:** [Hugging Face](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/hugging-face)
**Location:** Remote
**Role:** ML Engineering
**Experience:** 5+ years
**Skills:** Python, Async Python, Distributed Systems, WebSockets, Webrtc, Gpu Serving, LLMs, Multimodal Models, Automatic Speech Recognition, Text-To-Speech, Quantization, Voice Activity Detection, Audio Pipelines, Real-Time Inference, Autoscaling
**Posted:** 2026-09-02

> Own and evolve Hugging Face’s open-source voice-agent stack and bring hf-voice from demo to production. The role requires senior experience with Python, distributed real-time systems, developer infrastructure, and production AI or multimodal models.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Own the architecture of the open-source `speech-to-speech` library, including pipeline design, latency budgets, and real-time loop reliability.
- Integrate new automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech (TTS), and end-to-end speech models while maintaining clean abstractions.
- Review community pull requests, triage issues, release versions, and grow the contributor community.
- Design the `hf-voice` developer API and streaming protocol, including session lifecycle, WebSockets/WebRTC transport, authentication, error semantics, and versioning.
- Build real-time GPU inference serving, concurrency, autoscaling, observability, and cost controls.
- Collaborate with Hub and inference teams to integrate voice agents into products and demonstrations.
- Take the product from demo to production through load testing, SLOs, and graceful degradation.
- Write documentation, examples, and templates; support existing deployments such as the Reachy Mini fleet.
- Optionally present the work through blog posts, demos, and conference talks.

## Requirements
- Senior-level experience owning substantial architecture and driving projects autonomously.
- Experience building developer-facing infrastructure at an AI or developer-tools company, such as inference APIs or agent infrastructure.
- Substantial open-source contributions to a Python library.
- Proficiency with asynchronous Python and distributed systems, including failure modes.
- Experience shipping real-time systems involving streaming, WebSockets, WebRTC, audio/video pipelines, or live inference.
- Production experience with LLMs or multimodal models.
- Clear written communication and experience collaborating asynchronously and in public.
- Motivation to work on voice and conversational AI.

## Nice-to-haves
- Contributions to voice-agent frameworks such as speech-to-speech, Pipecat, LiveKit Agents, Vocode, or TEN.
- Contributions to `llama.cpp` or another low-level inference runtime.
- Experience with ASR, TTS, or end-to-end speech models, including latency and quality evaluation.
- GPU serving, quantization, or on-device inference experience.
- Audio pipeline knowledge, including voice activity detection, echo cancellation, jitter buffers, barge-in, and turn detection.
- Experience shipping to embedded or robotics targets.
- Public technical work such as talks, blog posts, or demos.

## Compensation and Benefits
- Company equity.
- Conference, training, and education reimbursement.
- Health, dental, and vision benefits for employees and dependents.
- Parental leave and flexible paid time off.
- Flexible working hours and remote work options.
- Distributed-work support, office access, and workstation equipment when needed.

## Similar jobs

- [Senior AI Engineer – Notebooks](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/fed3b705-a67d-4a63-8cff-b6c19357b4f7) - Datadog - Bordeaux, France
- [Staff Machine Learning Engineer](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/2cb6da8f-4a54-448d-a4b6-fc05f1412a12) - Payabli - Remote
- [AI Engineer - New Verticals](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/4159c72e-536e-4211-969c-6bcb9ad805fd) - Protege - Remote
- [Algorithm Engineer](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/3bef67e8-d4e7-4866-a9b8-6c7863fe2e96) - Beacon Biosignals - Remote - $150k – $170k/yr
- [Agent Systems Engineer](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/2b04a068-018b-4fe0-915f-4fdf80d4c582) - Adaption Labs - San Francisco, CA

**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/d94b25b6-146b-444c-a79d-9254242a204b
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/d94b25b6-146b-444c-a79d-9254242a204b