Audio Firmware Engineer

<p><strong>About Hark</strong></p> <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p><strong>About the Role&nbsp;</strong></p> <p>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.</p> <p><strong>Responsibilities</strong></p> <ul> <li>Bring up audio on new hardware in the Android system — codecs, mics, speakers, routing, and low-level platform integration</li> <li>Design, implement, and manage audio use cases on SoC platforms across playback, capture, voice, and always-on listening paths</li> <li>Integrate and tune audio paths across the Android audio stack (HAL, AudioFlinger, Audio Policy Manager, TinyALSA/ALSA) and the underlying SoC audio frameworks</li> <li>Debug complex audio issues end-to-end using platform logs, working from kernel and DSP traces up through application-level symptoms</li> <li>Partner with the AI team to support audio-driven inference workloads (wake word, ASR, speech enhancement) within latency, power, and memory budgets</li> <li>Collaborate with hardware, acoustics, and product teams from prototype through production to ship audio that feels effortless to users</li> </ul> <p><strong>Requirements</strong></p> <ul> <li>3+ years of professional firmware or embedded audio development, ideally on consumer products that have shipped at scale</li> <li>Proficient with C/C++ in resource-constrained, real-time environments</li> <li>Familiar with Android audio architecture: Audio HAL, AudioFlinger, Audio Policy Manager, and TinyALSA/ALSA interfaces</li> <li>Hands-on experience with audio tooling and frameworks</li> <li>Comfort working across the full audio stack — kernel drivers, DSP firmware, HAL, framework — and debugging issues that span all of it</li> <li>Experience working alongside hardware engineers during board bring-up and reading schematics for audio subsystems</li> </ul> <p><strong>Bonus Qualifications</strong></p> <ul> <li>Working knowledge of audio processing algorithms — dynamic range control, echo cancellation, noise suppression, beamforming, and similar</li> <li>DSP optimization experience, including fixed-point development, SIMD and VLIW.</li> <li>Tune audio quality and validate behavior across acoustic conditions</li> <li>Experience deploying machine learning models on embedded platforms, especially audio models running on DSP or NPU</li> <li>Background shipping voice-first or far-field audio products</li> </ul> <p><strong>Compensation</strong></p> <p>The US base salary range for this full-time position is between $120,000 - $300,000 annually.</p> <p>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.</p>