Media Software Engineer, Speech (All Levels)

About the role

The Media Team at Cantina is building the real-time infrastructure powering live conversations between people and AI. Our goal is simple but technically challenging: make interacting with AI feel fast, natural, and truly conversational.

Responsibilities

• Improve the real-time speech and media systems powering live AI conversations.
• Reduce latency and optimize responsiveness across audio streaming and speech pipelines.
• Build new voice and video capabilities that enable more immersive interactions between users and AI bots.
• Improve and extend our custom WebRTC infrastructure across iOS, Android, and web.
• Work closely with product and platform teams to shape the future of conversational AI experiences.

Requirements

• BS or MS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field; or equivalent experience.
• Excellent communications skills.
• Experience with C or C++.
• Strong computer science fundamentals, including familiarity with data structures and concurrent / multithreaded programming.
• Exposure to system programming concepts, including network protocols; memory management; and distributed systems fundamentals.
• Object-oriented programming and design skills.
• Interest in solving challenging, subtle engineering problems.

Qualifications

• Previous experience with WebRTC, streaming protocols, or other media-related technologies.
• Familiarity with audio or video processing techniques and algorithms.
• Experience creating backend server infrastructure.
• Experience developing software for iOS and Android.
• Familiarity with building services using Node.js.
• Familiarity with artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques, particularly in relation to speech recognition and synthesis.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and generous company equity.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance – 99.99% of premiums covered by Cantina.
• 42 days of paid time off, including: 15 PTO days, 10 sick days, 15 company holidays, and 2 floating holidays.
• Generous parental leave & fertility support.
• 401(k) retirement savings plan.
• Lifestyle spending account – $500/month to use however you’d like.
• Complimentary lunch and snacks for in-office employees.
• One Medical membership, and more!