Digital Signal Processing Engineer (Acoustic)

Location: Onsite - Austin, TX

Employment Type: Full-Time

Job Title: Senior Acoustic DSP & Real-Time Beamforming Engineer

Company Overview

We are a funded startup building autonomous machines for defense markets. Our first product is designed to counter small, fast FPV suicide drones. Our robots require world-class perception and decision-making. If you love turning cutting-edge algorithms into field-ready capability, this is your playground.

Position Summary

We are seeking a Senior Acoustic DSP & Real-Time Beamforming Engineer to own the stack that turns raw multichannel audio into reliable bearings and alerts. You will design algorithms to function in messy outdoor conditions, optimized for low-latency execution on edge hardware to ensure our systems react faster than the threat.

Essential Duties

• Build the DSP Pipeline: Design and implement the full pipeline, including framing/STFT, filtering, coherence features, and noise/wind handling.
• Implement Beamforming & DoA: Compare and deploy approaches like MUSIC, ESPRIT, and MVDR, selecting the best strategy based on real-world field metrics.
• Hardware Partnership: Translate physical constraints (mic spacing, SNR limits) into algorithm decisions to ensure hardware and software are perfectly synced.
• Create Evaluation Infrastructure: Curate datasets and build replay harnesses and error taxonomies to answer "why did it fail" with data-driven certainty.
• Edge Optimization: Optimize for compute limits on CPU/GPU with deterministic behavior and robust fallbacks for high-stakes environments.

Requirements

• Experience: Demonstrated success delivering real-world multichannel audio, radar, or sonar systems validated on messy, imperfect data.
• Technical Depth: Strong beamforming/DoA fundamentals and sensitivity to calibration errors (phase errors, channel mismatch).
• Coding: Proficiency in Python and C++/Rust with the ability to productize, profile, and optimize code.
• Iteration: A mindset that iterates from measurements: logging → hypothesis → change → field verification.
• Compliance: This position requires access to export-controlled information under ITAR. Only U.S. persons are permitted to access such information.
• Background: Must be willing to submit to a background check.

Nice-to-Have

• Embedded deployment experience (NVIDIA Jetson)
• Acoustic tracking, temporal smoothing, or multi-source handling
• Prior defense startup experience

Benefits

• Competitive salary + early equity
• Opportunity to build systems the Department of Defense actively needs
• New lab equipped with Jetsons, scopes, and 3-D printers
• Direct influence on product and technology roadmap
• 100% employer paid health, dental, and vision insurance
• 50% employer paid health, dental, and vision insurance for dependents
• Unlimited PTO
• Relocation assistance

About the interview

1. Application screen phone call (30 min)
2. Virtual interview with co-founder #1 (30 min via MS Teams)
3. Paid take-home ($500, ~4-8 hours)
4. Review work
5. Virtual interview with co-founder #2 (45 min via MS Teams)
6. In-person visit to Austin/Offer