Hybrid Senior Staff Software Engineer – Voice

at DeepL

• Job title: Senior Staff Software Engineer – Voice
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Senior
• Salary: Not specified
• Degree requirement: Bachelor's Degree
• Location requirements: Hybrid, London, United Kingdom

About the role

• Senior Staff Engineer at DeepL leading architecture and development of real-time voice translation systems. Bridging AI research with production environments and mentoring cross-functional teams.

Responsibilities

• Own Full-Stack Architecture End-to-End: You will design, build, and seamlessly operate complex systems across the entire stack—spanning from the front-end user experience down to low-latency backend infrastructure and heavy audio pipelines.
• Bridge AI Research and Production: You will interface heavily with our AI research teams, translating complex generative AI and machine learning models into robust, highly-available production environments.
• Shape Product Strategy & Direction: You will act as a primary decision-maker, working cross-functionally with product managers, researchers, and designers to translate ambiguous customer problems into highly impactful technical solutions.
• Scale the Voice Infrastructure: You will architect systems that meet the uncompromising, high standards of real-time translation: ultra-low latency, impeccable high uptime, and flawless ML integration.
• Lead by Example (The "Player-Coach"): You will not lead from the ivory tower; you will stay deeply hands-on, actively contributing production code while guiding high-level architectural decisions and mentoring the team.
• Mentor and Elevate: You will grow our organizational engineering maturity through dedicated technical coaching, thoughtful code reviews, and by driving strict best practices in observability, reliability, and scale.

Requirements

• Distinguished Full-Stack Technical Leadership: You have a proven track record of leading the architecture and delivery of highly complex, track-level products. You own the full stack, rather than limiting your scope strictly to backend or infrastructure systems.
• Deep Expertise in Streaming and Generative AI: You intimately understand the extreme technical nuances of audio streaming, low-latency real-time systems, and deploying generative AI pipelines at massive scale.
• Hands-On Builder Mentality: You actively write code, prototype, and debug complex issues alongside your team. An unwillingness to be hands-on with the code is a strict dealbreaker for this role.
• Product-First Obsession: You focus ruthlessly on user outcomes and customer value, not just theoretical technical purity. You make highly pragmatic engineering decisions with long-term maintainability and scale in mind.
• Cross-Functional Influence & Mentorship: You have experience successfully leading large initiatives spanning multiple teams (3+ teams). You inherently raise others up through knowledge-sharing, exceptional communication, and a highly collaborative mindset.
• AI-Native Developer: You embrace the potential of AI to transform software development. You actively use and advocate for AI tools to streamline workflows and are eager to guide the organization in adopting AI-assisted engineering practices.

Benefits

• Diverse and internationally distributed team: joining our team means becoming part of a large, global community with people of more than 90 nationalities. We're more than just colleagues; we're a group of professionals with a shared mission to connect diverse cultures. Our global presence is growing, with our employees based in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, the US, and Japan, and we continue to expand our network
• Open communication, regular feedback: as a language-focused company, we value the importance of clear, honest communication. We value smooth collaboration, direct and actionable feedback, and believe that leading with empathy and growth mindset makes us better together
• Hybrid work, flexible hours: we offer a hybrid work schedule, with team members coming into the office twice a week. This allows you to engage directly with your team and experience the unique energy of our workspace, while still enjoying the flexibility and comfort of working from home. With flexible working hours and trust in your productivity, we are in sync with your team’s general locations and time zones to foster effective and seamless collaboration
• Regular in-person team events: we bond over vibrant events that are as unique as our team, from local team and business unit gatherings, to new-joiner onboardings, to company-wide events that bring us all together–literally
• Monthly full-day hacking sessions: every month, we have Hack Fridays, where you can spend your time diving into a project you're passionate about and get the opportunity to work with other teams–we value your initiatives, impact, and creativity
• 30 days of annual leave: we value your peace of mind. With 30 days off (excluding public holidays) and access to mental health resources, we make sure you're as strong mentally as you are professionally
• Competitive benefits: just as our team spans the globe, so does our benefits package. We've crafted it to reflect the diversity of our team and tailored it to align with your unique location, to ensure you feel supported every step of the way