Lead Systems Architect

ABOUT SOUNDER

Sounder is an industry-leading data solutions platform for audio publishers, marketers, and ad marketplaces. We build cutting-edge artificial intelligence and machine learning systems to analyze the world’s audio and help generate a deep understanding through relevant data and key insights.

Data fuels growth. We’ve seen it time and time again across every industry. When stakeholders access deep, actionable, and scalable insights, it unlocks a new frontier of opportunity.

This moment for the audio industry has finally arrived.

Sounder exists to usher in this data-powered transformation for audio. In turn, the industry will grow faster than ever. Now that publishers, marketers, and ad marketplaces have access to insights, we will see increased efficiencies, better decision-making, improved product experiences, more robust advertising performance, and superior listener engagement.

If you’re passionate about the future of the spoken-word economy, you’ve found the right place. Apply from anywhere, and join our remote team!

About The Role

As an engineer and architect on the Core Engineering team, you'll be a key member of Sounder's Product, Engineering & Design team. You'll be responsible for contributing to and delivering against the company's product vision and engineering roadmap. Your responsibilities will include designing, building, deploying, and maintaining Sounder's infrastructure, backend systems, internal tools, and APIs. We're seeking an experienced candidate capable of leading (but not managing) a team of strong engineers while making a significant individual contribution. Your background may include roles as a backend engineer, site reliability engineer, systems architect, or infrastructure engineer. We care more about your specific experience and willingness to learn new skills, make technical decisions with imperfect information, and mentor colleagues.

You will work closely with various departments throughout Sounder including but not limited to Design, Marketing, Product, and AI. You’ll have the opportunity to work on a wide range of projects and tackle a variety of technical challenges.




What You'll Do

• Collaborate daily with other engineers and product team members to solve problems, implement features, and better test, instrument, manage and scale our platform.
• Design, architect, build and maintain Sounder's internal tooling, and infrastructure.
• Plan, architect, build and maintain APIs to connect services with big data processes & pipelines
• Conduct experiments to determine how to cost-effectively scale our services
• Take initiative to learn, grow and develop technical skills to ensure Sounder’s product is exceptional
• Research new technologies to find the most optimal technical solutions
• Become an expert in podcasting technology and the overall audio industry

Requirements

What We're Looking For

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience
• 2+ years of experience developing infrastructure for large-scale services
• Experience with DevOps practices such as CI/CD, monitoring, and testing (load/integration/regression/unit)
• Experience with at least one of the major cloud platforms: AWS (preferred), Azure, GCP, and knowledge of scaling best practices within cloud environments
• Experience with distributed storage and database technologies such as S3, DynamoDB, Aurora, BigTable, etc.
• A proven track record of planning and shipping successful technology
• Extensive experience in building web platforms and working with third-party APIs
• Attention to detail and an eye for great architecture, performance, and scalability
• Strong analytical, organizational, and communication skills, both oral and written in English
• Eagerness to work in a fast-paced work environment
• Experience with search infrastructure (esp ElasticSearch), AI/ML pipelines, data engineering, or site reliability engineering is a big plus
• BA/BS in an analytical field such as math, computer science, software engineering
• You should be obsessed with podcasts!

Benefits

• Competitive salary and equity commensurate with experience and performance
• Full medical, dental, and vision packages to fit your needs
• Unlimited vacation policy; work hard and take time off when you need it
• A rare, ground-floor opportunity to work with sharp, motivated teammates solving hard challenges and changing the world in a fast-growing industry just getting started
  
  
  Please note this role is open to candidates outside of New York City as well. The information below is provided fo