Senior Embedded Systems Engineer (Audio)

Location: Remote, US or Canada - NYC preferred

Department: Hardware & Systems Engineering

About Inspiren 

Inspiren offers the most complete and connected ecosystem in senior living. Founded by Michael Wang, a former Green Beret turned cardiothoracic nurse, Inspiren proves that compassionate care and technology can coexist - bringing peace of mind to residents, families, and staff.

Our integrated solutions seamlessly fit into existing workflows, capturing everything happening within a community. Backed by nurse specialists and powerful analytics, we provide the data operators need to make informed clinical and operational decisions - driving efficiency, profitability, and better care outcomes.

About the Role

We are seeking a Senior Embedded Systems Engineer with a strong background in real-time audio, to lead the development of our 2-way communication, dictation, and high-fidelity audio communication platform. If you’ve spent your career at the intersection of Linux and signal processing, battling jitter buffers, optimizing GStreamer pipelines, and navigating the complexities of NAT traversal we would like to hear from you.

This is a hands-on engineering role with meaningful system design work. You will ship features, while also strengthening the foundation those features depend on: modular boundaries, explicit contracts, and automated testing and validation.

What You'll Do

• Architect & Implement: Design a robust, two-way audio solution for embedded Linux platforms.
• Pipeline Mastery: Leverage ALSA to develop, implement, and optimize GStreamer plugins and pipelines for low-latency on-device processing, encoding, decoding. 
• Connectivity & Traversal: Implement and support for WebRTC and ensure seamless connectivity through the use of ICE/ STUN/ TURN protocols in complex enterprise networks.
• Performance Tuning: Profile CPU and memory usage and optimize audio algorithms (AEC, AGC, Noise Suppression) for ARM-based SoC architectures.
• Lead Embedded Systems Projects: Oversee the end-to-end development and performance optimization of firmware for a variety of both microprocessors and microcontrollers.
• Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Work closely with hardware, application, ML, and platform engineers, Product Managers, key-stakeholders, and our JDM partners to define product and system requirements.
• Mentor, Innovate, and Optimize: Stay current with industry trends and emerging technologies. Introduce new methodologies and technologies to both enhance performance and meet design specifications, and help your team grow. Provide deep technical expertise and support in embedded systems development, testing, and validation across the product lifecycle.
• Ensure Quality, Reliability, and Compliance: Leverage your experience making great technical design decisions, lead decision-making on prototyping options, conduct testing, and validate embedded system performance and reliability against requirements, including security, environmental, and accelerated testing. Ensure all embedded software meets regulatory standards and industry best practices. Set quality and reliability specifications.
• Solve Problems: Troubleshoot and diagnose complex, real-world issues - then recommend and implement effective solutions in a timely manner.

What You Bring

• Educational Background: Bachelor's or Master's degree in Embedded Systems, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related engineering field.
• Experience: 7+ years of hands-on experience across the embedded landscape, including Bare-metal and RTOS development for microcontrollers, and Embedded Linux for microprocessor-based systems.
• Real-Time Audio: Deep understanding of digital audio fundamentals (PCM, sample rates, bit-depth), compression standards (Opus, G.711, AAC), and Linux (ALSA, PipeWire, GStreamer).
• Networking Protocol Guru: Proven expertise in VoIP architectures and the WebRTC ecosystem with the ability to explain the nuances of NAT traversal, firewall punch-through, and ICE in your sleep.
• Programming Proficiency: Proficiency in embedded development, coupled with robust analysis and debugging capabilities utilizing tools (Coverity, Valgrind, GDB) and methodologies (SWD, JTAG).
• Communication: Excellent verbal and written communication skills are essential for thriving in our fast-paced, remote-first, dynamic environment, where adapting to changing priorities is key. Start-up experience is a plus!

Details

• The annual salary for this role is $180,000 - $200,000 + equity + benefits (including medical, dental, and vision) 
• Flexible PTO
• Location: Remote, US or Canada. NYC preferred. 
• Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, or disability status.

Compensation & Benefits

At Inspiren, we are committed to fair, transparent, and equitable compensation. We know that every candidate brings a unique combination of experience, skills, and perspectives, and we take these factors into account when determining pay. While compensation may vary depending on your background, role, and location, we are proud to offer a competitive base salary and total benefits package, alongside eligibility for equity awards in the form of stock options.

We believe great work deserves great rewards. Our compensation and benefits are designed to recognize your contributions and reflect the standards of leading organizations in our field.

Your recruiter will be happy to walk you through the full compensation package, including what your total pay could look like, so you have a clear picture of both the immediate and long-term value of joining our team.