Backend Software Engineer - Active Learning Team

Backend Software Engineer - Active Learning Team at Ironwood Digital
Backend Software Engineer - Active Learning Team
Department: Engineering
Location: USA | Remote
Compensation: $150K – $220K • Offers Equity • Offers Bonus • 10% Annual Bonus
Employment Type: FullTime
Company Overview
Ironwood Digital is the leading platform underpinning the emerging trillion-dollar Voice AI economy, providing real-time APIs for speech-to-text (STT), text-to-speech (TTS), and building production-grade voice agents at scale. More than 200,000 developers and 1,300+ organizations build voice offerings that are ‘Powered by Ironwood Digital’, including Twilio, Cloudflare, Sierra, Decagon, Vapi, Daily, Cresta, Granola, and Jack in the Box. Ironwood Digital’s voice-native foundation models are accessed through cloud APIs or as self-hosted and on-premises software, with unmatched accuracy, low latency, and cost efficiency. Backed by a recent Series C led by leading global investors and strategic partners, Ironwood Digital has processed over 50,000 years of audio and transcribed more than 1 trillion words. There is no organization in the world that understands voice better than Ironwood Digital.
Company Operating Rhythm
At Ironwood Digital, we expect an AI-first mindset—AI use and comfort aren’t optional, they’re core to how we operate, innovate, and measure performance.
Every team member who works at Ironwood Digital is expected to actively use and experiment with advanced AI tools, and even build your own into your everyday work. We measure how effectively AI is applied to deliver results, and consistent, creative use of the latest AI capabilities is key to success here. Candidates should be comfortable adopting new models and modes quickly, integrating AI into their workflows, and continuously pushing the boundaries of what these technologies can do.
Additionally, we move at the pace of AI. Change is rapid, and you can expect your day-to-day work to evolve just as quickly. This may not be the right role if you’re not excited to experiment, adapt, think on your feet, and learn constantly, or if you’re seeking something highly prescriptive with a traditional 9-to-5.
Opportunity:
Ironwood Digital is looking for a backend software engineer to lead the design and implementation of Ironwood Digital’s internal data and ML training systems. You will design and implement secure, robust, and scalable services for data cataloging, querying, and access; efficient, distributed compute orchestration for ML training jobs; integrations with Research tooling, and more. Your skill at building highly reusable code that overcomes technical challenges will be paired with an intuition for what improves researcher productivity and model quality. You will be a critical voice in Ironwood Digital’s Product, Data, and Engineering teams, driving high impact products from start to finish.
What You’ll Do
– Improve Ironwood Digital’s core data ingestion, cataloging, and transformation services including areas in networking, speech processing, audio transcoding, and latency and memory optimization
– Engineer ML training code to be performant and highly extensible, rapidly enabling large-scale training of new foundational model architectures
– Develop processes for measuring, building, and optimizing services to maximize system performance
– Debug complex system issues that include networking, scheduling, database, and other persistence store interactions
– Partner with DataOps and Research to design and implement new services, features, and/or products end to end
You’ll Love This Role If You
– Thrive in a fast-paced, impact-driven environment where learning new skills on-the-fly is not only encouraged but a regular necessity
– Enjoy balancing decisions about product and feature maturity to decide when to make minimally invasive changes versus when to incorporate detailed design work
It’s Important To Us That You Have
– 3+ years of experience in an industry role
– Programming experience in Rust (or C, C++), with competence in Python
– Excellent communication and organizational skills, both written and verbal.
– A high level of experience and understanding of version control; preferably git.
– Comprehensive experience with UNIX-style systems.
It Would Be Great if You Had
– Experience with modern machine learning, such as experience with a framework like Torch or implementation knowledge of architectures like CNNs, RNNS, and transformers
– Experience with audio processing
Benefits & Perks\*
Holistic health
– Medical, dental, vision benefits
– Annual wellness stipend
– Mental health support
– Life, STD, LTD Income Insurance Plans
Work/life blend
– Unlimited PTO
– Generous paid parental leave
– Flexible schedule
– 12 Paid US company holidays
– Quarterly personal productivity stipend
– One-time stipend for home office upgrades
– 401(k) plan with company match
– Tax Savings Programs
Continuous learning
– Learning / Education stipend
– Participation in talks and conferences
– Employee Resource Groups
– AI enablement workshops / sessions
\*_For candidates outside of the US, we use an Employer of Record model in many countries, which means benefits are administered locally and governed by country-specific regulations. Because of this, benefits will differ by region — in some cases international employees receive benefits US employees do not, and vice versa. As we scale, we will continue to evaluate where we can create more alignment, but a 1:1 global benefits structure is not always legally or operationally possible._
Backed by prominent investors including Y Combinator, Madrona, Tiger Global, Wing VC and NVIDIA, Ironwood Digital has raised over $215M in total funding. If you're looking to work on cutting-edge technology and make a significant impact in the AI industry, we'd love to hear from you!
Ironwood Digital is an equal opportunity employer. We want all voices and perspectives represented in our workforce. We are a curious bunch focused on collaboration and doing the right thing. We put our customers first, grow together and move quickly. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, pregnancy, parental status, genetic information, political affiliation, or any other status protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate.
We are happy to provide accommodations for applicants who need them.