Job Title: Audio Engineer V (Audio Render Tuning Engineer )
Location: Redmond, WA 5 days a week
Duration: 12 months (Possibility of extension depending on product roadmap)
Role Summary:
- We are looking for a contingent Audio Render Tuning Engineer to support Client's research AR glasses audio program.
- This role focuses on render-path DSP tuning of the speaker system using Client's internally developed embedded audio processing framework and tuning tools.
- The successful candidate will be hands-on in the lab, working closely with the Research Audio team to deliver a tuned, shipping-quality speaker experience.
Key Responsibilities:
- Render DSP Tuning: Perform speaker render-path tuning for research AR glasses using the companies internally developed embedded audio DSP framework and associated MATLAB-based tuning tools
- Tuning Components: Design and apply equalization filters, tune dynamic range compression and limiter parameters to optimize loudness, dynamics, sound quality, and distortion across use cases (media, voice, speech) while preserving speaker integrity
- Speaker Characterization & Baseline Measurement: Measure devices to establish baseline performance, collect frequency response, distortion (THD), and impedance data in anechoic or controlled acoustic environments
- Tuning Profile Management: Generate, compile, and validate tuning profiles via Client's internal tuning toolchain for deployment to device firmware
- Collaboration with Cross-Functional Teams: Work with hardware, firmware, algorithms, and research teams to align tuning with system-level requirements
- Documentation: Maintain tuning documentation, test reports, and configuration records for each tuning iteration and release candidate
- Tool Onboarding: Ramp up on Client's internal audio DSP ecosystem including graphical pipeline editors, render tuning tools, and device control utilities with support from internal tooling teams
Must-Have Skills:
- Hands-on DSP tuning on a speaker-type device. This is the single most important requirement. Knowing about these algorithms or having tested them is not sufficient - the candidate must have personally performed the tuning.
- Audio DSP fundamentals. Must understand what equalization, dynamic range compression, limiting, and speaker protection do, how they function, how they are used, and what the trade-offs are.
- Ability to apply and tune existing algorithms on an audio system (an audio systems engineer profile). Writing algorithms from scratch is not required.
Nice-to-have Skills:
- Direct AR/VR glasses or other head-worn audio device experience.
- Transducer-level characterization and speaker integration experience (T/S parameters, Klippel, impedance, excursion).
- Exposure to embedded audio middleware or firmware-level audio bring-up (Audio Weaver, Qualcomm QACT, ADSP integration).
Years of overall experience required? 10+ years
Required Qualifications:
- Prior experience performing audio systems render tuning for consumer electronics products (AR/VR glasses, hearables, headphones, wearables, telecom devices, smart speakers)
- Understanding of render DSP tuning approaches (EQ, DRC, limiting, speaker protection) and hands-on experience performing tuning in a lab environment
- Experience with electroacoustic measurement tools (e.g. Audio Precision (APx series), Listen SoundCheck, HEAD acoustics ACQUA) and measurement transducers
- Experience with MATLAB for audio signal processing, filter design, and tuning tool workflows
- Strong attention to detail and systematic approach to parameter optimization and documentation
- Ability to work independently on tuning tasks while collaborating with a broader audio engineering team
- Understanding of speaker protection algorithms (excursion limiting, thermal protection, brownout protection)
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Acoustics Engineering, or a related technical discipline
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience with speaker integration and transducer-level characterization (T/S parameters, Klippel, impedance, excursion)
- Exposure to DSP frameworks or audio middleware (AudioWeaver, Qualcomm QACT, or similar embedded audio toolchains)
- Experience with volume table tuning and perceptual loudness optimization
- Exposure to firmware-level audio bring-up or ADSP integration workflows
- Experience with capture-path audio tuning including any of beamforming and spatial filtering, noise suppression, wind noise rejection, wake-word/keyword detection and speech recognition testing, capture-path gain staging and mic array calibration
Surrounding Team & Key Projects:
- This is an audio hardware team within Client's Research organization.
- The team builds prototypes and proof-of-concept hardware to support research work - future ideation and devices that may or may not ultimately appear on the product roadmap, though the intent is that the work eventually feeds into future products.
- This particular project is well defined: it is the next iteration of Aria Gen 2, a data-collection glasses device that Client provides to researchers.
- The CWAM's team designs the hardware, working within a larger cross-functional group that includes mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, software engineers, and optics engineers.
- The team owns the audio components specifically - speakers, microphones, and the software and algorithms that process audio data for device features and data collection.
- The team designs the speaker and works with an external vendor on its implementation, then tests it.
- This contractor's role is to tune that system: applying software algorithms to optimize sound quality and measuring results against performance indicators.
Typical Day-to-Day in the role
- Measure the glasses in an anechoic chamber or lab environment to collect raw performance data.
- Work with the cross-functional team to define or receive performance targets.
- Develop or tune existing software algorithms to adjust the audio output of the speakers, then re-measure and validate against those targets.
- Split time between hands-on lab work and development work at the desk.
- Set up and conduct subjective demos and listening tests with managers and leaders across the audio team and cross-functional teams.
- Work with suppliers on troubleshooting - understanding trade-offs, diagnosing why performance falls short of expectations, and finding ways to extract additional performance.
- Interface regularly with audio software engineers, mechanical engineers, audio hardware engineers, and vendor partners.
What makes this role interesting?
- This is an opportunity to own the audio tuning of a next-generation Client research AR glasses device end to end. The contractor will work inside Client's Reality Labs Research organization on Aria 2+, a data-collection glasses platform used by researchers, and will have a direct, visible impact on how the device sounds.
- The role offers a rare combination of deep hands-on lab work - anechoic chamber measurement, electroacoustic characterization, subjective listening evaluation - with exposure to Client's internally developed embedded audio DSP framework and tuning toolchain, supported by the internal tooling teams that build it.
- The contractor will collaborate closely with hardware, firmware, algorithms, mechanical, optics, and vendor partners, giving broad visibility across a full product development cycle from early samples through multiple hardware build stages.
- Because the work is research-driven prototyping with the intent of feeding future products, the contractor gets to shape technology at the earliest stage.
Degrees/certifications required? Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Acoustics Engineering, or a related technical discipline
Interview Process:
How many rounds of interviews? 2 - 3 rounds
Types of Interviews:
Round 1: initial screen with CWAM - general and behavioral questions to understand the candidate.
Round 2: technical panel, in-depth on signal processing and cross-functional collaboration.
Interview Duration: 45 minutes to 1 hour per round
|
Spectraforce Technologies
Oct 28, 2026