Applied Machine Learning Engineer, Speak
Speech
$170-280k
Offers Equity
English language learning app
Open for applications
English language learning app
101-200 employees
Open for applications
$170-280k
Offers Equity
101-200 employees
Company mission
To teach the next billion people English and become the de facto way people learn languages.
Role
Who you are
- Extensive experience training and deploying custom deep learning models to production (experience with audio/speech strongly preferred)
- Proficiency in Python and common Deep Learning frameworks like PyTorch
- Strong communication skills and the ability to explain complex ML concepts to non-technical stakeholders
- Sharp product sense and an ability to think broadly and cross-functionally about model quality in the context of user experience
- 4 - 10 years of industry experience
What the job involves
- We are looking for an experienced Machine Learning Engineer to join our team and help develop cutting-edge phoneme recognition models to provide learners with effective pronunciation feedback
- In this role you will take ownership of the end-to-end modeling pipeline, from training and experimentation to deployment and monitoring
- You will also work closely with Product teams to design innovative learning experiences and measure the efficacy of production models as they affect our end users
- We are a small, dynamic team where you will likely also contribute as a developer and thought partner on broader team projects like ASR, assessment, content personalization, and much more
- Training and deploying phoneme recognition models end-to-end, including monitoring, performance tracking, and retraining
- Expanding our Pronunciation Coach to provide precise feedback and integrate more broadly across our learning platform
- Tracking metrics to measure performance of existing phoneme models across markets
- Building out an assessment system to provide nuanced feedback on pronunciation, intonation, prosody, and more
- Building and maintaining data infrastructure; i.e. audio data pipelines, training/evaluation datasets creation and management, labeling/active learning loop
- Supporting the broader Speech & ML team (e.g. developing and localizing ASR models)
Our take
As the international language of business, there are many incentives for global entrepreneurs to learn English. With over 1.5 billion people actively learning the language to better their chances in the job market, the customer base for Speak, an AI tutor in the English language is potentially massive.
Investors believe so too, with tens of millions of dollars raised to fund the company from a range of international firms including Korean investors and the Silicon Valley-based OpenAI Fund. This surge of capital will help Speak develop its software and open new markets, especially in the US.
Speak is attempting to break into a human-saturated education market and the success of learning English fluently through its platform is yet to be proven. That being said, it has the potential to become a leading tool specifically in the mobile app sector if it can prove itself as efficient and accessible as the language learning platform DuoLingo.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Company
Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)
Dec 2024
$78m
SERIES C
Jun 2024
$20m
SERIES B
Total funding: $165.8m
Company benefits
- Speak offers all the standard benefits you'd expect at a tech startup, along with stipends for commuting, fitness, and learning!
- In addition, team members are encouraged to travel between offices and we also host an annual company offsite
Company HQ
Potrero Hill, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Connor Zwick
(CEO)Previously Advisor at Chegg Inc, CEO at coco Controller, Flascards+ and Freelance Blogger at Envato.
Salary benchmarks
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