At a Glance
- Tasks: Join us to build innovative AI applications and tackle exciting challenges in real-time performance.
- Company: Inworld, a leading AI company transforming interactive experiences.
- Benefits: Competitive salary, equity, health benefits, and a dynamic work environment.
- Other info: Collaborative culture with opportunities for personal and professional growth.
- Why this job: Be part of a groundbreaking team shaping the future of conversational AI.
- Qualifications: Strong programming skills in Go, Kotlin, Java, or Rust; cloud service experience required.
The predicted salary is between 150000 - 240000 $ per year.
About Inworld
At Inworld, we believe that the benefits of AI should extend beyond business workflows to the applications and experiences that we enjoy every day. We began by pushing the frontier of lifelike, interactive characters for games and entertainment, pioneering realtime conversational AI at scale. Today, we apply that expertise to provide the multimodal models, pipelines and tools needed to build and evolve consumer‑scale, real‑time conversational AI applications across learning, health, social, assistants, games and media.
About the role
Inworld recently launched an exciting new platform for consumer AI applications, and we’re looking for an ambitious and capable Staff Backend Engineer to join us and take this platform even farther. The core of the new platform is the Inworld Runtime, announced in August and currently available as the npm package @inworld/runtime. The primary idiom is specifying AI computations as graphs, but there’s much more to it.
- API‑based model services: In June, we announced our custom TTS models and API, which includes free instant voice cloning.
- Data ingestion: The Inworld Runtime generates telemetry data, which we ingest into our cloud Platform and make available for analysis in our web Portal.
- Services for control and optimization, such as the Dynamic A/B experiments that launched in August alongside the Inworld Runtime.
As a Staff Backend Engineer, you would be a significant part of one or more of these areas. The key challenges are:
- Shipping quickly. AI is evolving weekly, so there’s a ton of opportunity to be had.
- Zero to one. The platform is not a simple copycat.
- Realtime, online. As consumer applications become more capable of listening and talking, performance will matter.
Finally, almost everything here is a collaboration with our sibling ML teams, since ML and AI are critical to providing the learning and adaptability central to this vision. Please note: This is an IC‑focused role. We are looking for someone who loves direct technical contribution alongside very capable peers.
What you’ll do
- Establish significant scope: Collaborate with the PMs, engineers and leads to determine the biggest product needs to focus on now.
- Operate with technical autonomy: You have considerable leeway to suggest how to address a given focus area.
- Collaborate, execute, deliver: This is the core of the building loop.
- Reflect and drive improvements: Especially as a Staff Engineer, advocate for and realize system improvements.
Expected experience
- Excellent programming skills and experience in a statically typed backend programming language, preferably Go, Kotlin, Java or Rust.
- Experience developing and deploying cloud‑based services to at least hundreds of qps (preferably more).
- Experience with relational databases (PostgreSQL or MySQL).
- Hands‑on experience with caching (Redis or Memcached), pubsub/queues, data pipelines (Flink, Beam), and Cloud storage.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
Bonus Qualifications
- Experience with analytics or timeseries databases (ClickHouse, Timescale, InfluxDB).
- Experience with OpenTelemetry.
- Experience with C++.
The base salary range for this full‑time position is C$150,000 – C$240,000. In addition to base pay, total compensation includes equity and benefits. Within the range, individual pay is determined by work location, level, and additional factors, including competencies, experience, and business needs.
Staff Backend Engineer – Canada employer: Inworld AI
Inworld is an exceptional employer for Machine Learning Engineers, particularly those passionate about speech technologies. Located in the vibrant city of Vancouver, we foster a collaborative work culture that encourages innovation and creativity, while providing ample opportunities for professional growth through partnerships with industry giants like Microsoft and Epic Games. Join us to be at the forefront of transforming AI-driven gaming experiences, all while enjoying a supportive environment that values your contributions.
