Applied AI Engineer

Why AssemblyAI

AssemblyAI builds the best-in-class Voice AI models powering the next generation of voice applications. Our models serve 600M+ inference calls monthly, process 1M+ hours of audio daily, and power 2 billion+ end-user experiences. The Voice AI space is at an inflection point; we’re looking for folks truly excited to join a small team and help define the future of the industry.

We are one of the most capital-efficient AI companies on the planet - with under 100 people generating roughly $500K ARR per employee, we sit among the top 5 most revenue-dense teams within the fastest-growing AI companies today. That's not an accident; it's a deliberate choice to stay lean, move fast, and give every person on the team outsized ownership and impact. With thousands of customers including Granola, Fireflies, Figure AI, and CallRail, the company has real scale - processing over 2 million hours of audio daily and handling more than 1 million API calls every day. This is a rare growth-stage opportunity where the business is proven and the trajectory is steep, but the team is still small enough that your fingerprints are on everything.

If you've ever felt buried under layers of bureaucracy, starved of real ownership, or frustrated watching your work disappear into a slow-moving org, AssemblyAI is built differently. The company operates as a true meritocracy, with no heavy planning or approval processes and no gatekeeping on the tools or information you need. For anyone who genuinely cares about voice AI, not as a trend to chase, but as a technology to build, this is the place where the most interesting problems at the most interesting scale are being solved by a team small enough that you'll actually know everyone's name.

We’re committed to creating a space where our employees can bring their full selves to work and have equal opportunity to succeed. No matter your race, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, origin, ability, age, veteran status, if joining this mission speaks to you, we encourage you to apply!

About the Role:

We're looking for an Applied AI Engineer to join our team at the intersection of cutting-edge AI research and real-world customer applications. This is a highly dynamic, customer-facing technical role where you'll build demos, troubleshoot production issues, and help customers implement our Speech AI models in creative and impactful ways.

You'll be working directly with developers and technical teams at companies ranging from early-stage startups to enterprise organizations. Your days will involve rapid context-switching between building prototypes for new use cases, debugging urgent customer issues, and collaborating with our Sales, Success, Engineering, Product, and Research teams to ensure customers succeed with our platform.

This role requires strong technical skills, excellent communication abilities, and the creativity to solve novel problems under time pressure. You'll be empowered to use AI tools and modern development practices to deliver solutions quickly and effectively.

What You’ll Do:

Customer-Facing Technical Work (60%)

Guide customers through their entire product journey —from initial implementation and technical onboarding, through development and testing, all the way to production deployment. Continue to provide support post-launch to ensure their implementation is performing optimally and meeting their business objectives

Build custom demos and prototypes that showcase how AssemblyAI's models can solve specific customer use cases

Lead technical discovery sessions with prospects and customers to understand their requirements and design optimal implementations

Assist with competitive evaluations by providing benchmarks, designing fair comparison tests, and helping customers evaluate our models against alternatives. Work closely with customers to ensure they have the data and support needed to make informed decisions

Troubleshoot production issues for customers using our streaming and async APIs, sometimes requiring you to debug code in languages you may not use daily (Java, Go, Ruby, etc.)

Provide technical guidance on architecture, scaling, data privacy, and best practices for integrating our APIs

Create proofs-of-concept that demonstrate the "art of the possible" with Speech AI

Travel to customer sites for technical workshops, implementation support, and relationship building with key accounts

Internal Collaboration Product Influence (30%)

Serve as the voice of the customer to our Product and Research teams —test and dogfood new products and features before they reach customers, providing feedback from a practitioner's perspective. Advocate for improvements and new capabilities based on real-world use cases you encounter, ensuring our roadmap aligns with customer needs

Contribute to documentation, guides, and example code that help developers integrate our APIs more effectively

Identify patterns in customer issues and work wit…