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Research Scientist - Audio

Conducts ML research on LLMs and audio models to enhance real-time voice agents' reasoning, latency, and conversational quality. Prototypes models, designs evaluations, and bridges research to production systems requiring strong PyTorch expertise and experimental mindset.

225k – 400kRedwood City, CAML EngineeringOnsite

About the role

Key Responsibilities

  • Research & Experimentation – Explore and develop new techniques across LLMs and audio models to improve reasoning, latency, and conversational quality in real-time systems.
  • Model Prototyping – Rapidly build and iterate on experimental models and pipelines, turning research ideas into working prototypes.
  • Evaluation & Benchmarking – Design novel evaluation frameworks, datasets, and metrics to measure performance on complex, real-world voice tasks.
  • Bridge Research to Production – Collaborate closely with engineering to translate research insights into deployable systems.
  • Human Feedback Loops – Develop methods to incorporate human evaluation into model improvement, especially for subjective conversational quality.
  • Advance the Frontier – Stay at the cutting edge of ML research and bring new ideas into Retell’s product and infrastructure.

Requirements

  • Strong ML Research Background – Worked on advanced ML problems (e.g., LLM pre-training and post training, transcription model training, text to speech model training, or multimodal systems), either in industry or academia.
  • Deep Technical Foundation – Comfortable with PyTorch, model architectures, and the math behind modern machine learning.
  • Experimental Mindset – Enjoy exploring open-ended problems and iterating quickly on ideas.
  • Bridging Theory & Practice – Translate research into systems that work in real-world environments.
  • Startup-Ready – Thrive in fast-paced environments with high ownership and ambiguity.
  • Collaborative & Clear Communicator – Explain complex ideas and work cross-functionally to drive impact.

Compensation

Cash: $225,000 - $400,000 base salary
Equity: Offers Equity
Other Benefits: 100% coverage for medical, dental, and vision insurance; $70/day DoorDash credit; $200/month wellness reimbursement; $300/month commuter reimbursement; $75/month phone bill reimbursement; $50/month internet reimbursement

Skills

PyTorchLLMsAudio ModelsMachine LearningText-To-SpeechTranscriptionMultimodal SystemsModel Architectures

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