We are seeking a Staff Systems Engineer with deep expertise in Python’s asyncio framework to architect and implement high-concurrency, low-latency backend systems for real-time voice-driven applications. This role will focus on event-driven design, asynchronous processing pipelines, and performance-critical middleware that interacts with voice AI services and hardware systems. The ideal candidate is fluent in Python concurrency patterns and can architect scalable, fault-tolerant systems that drive next-generation drive-thru automation.
Async Architecture & System Design:
• Design and implement high-performance asynchronous systems using asyncio, aiohttp, and real-time communication protocols.
• Architect event loops, task scheduling frameworks, and non-blocking I/O for voice streaming pipelines.
Real-Time Data Processing:
• Build async audio routing and processing layers for handling real-time audio streams.
• Ensure tight control over memory usage, CPU-bound blocking, and coroutine orchestration.
• API & Middleware Development:
• Develop WebSocket and HTTP APIs using asynchronous frameworks (e.g., FastAPI).
• Write async middleware to manage voice interactions, user state, and session lifecycles.
Performance & Debugging:
• Profile event loops, optimize coroutine concurrency, and resolve deadlocks, race conditions, and memory leaks.
• Implement watchdog timers, graceful degradation, and recovery for long-running async tasks.
• System Reliability & Monitoring:
• Develop observability tooling for async-heavy services including tracing, logging, and custom metrics.
• Build self-healing patterns for async services in edge or cloud environments.
Collaboration & Mentorship:
• Collaborate with voice engineers, hardware integrators, and AI/ML teams to ensure asynchronous interfaces meet real-time constraints.
• Mentor engineers on best practices in Python concurrency, structured concurrency, and testing async code.
• 8+ years in software/system development with a strong emphasis on asynchronous Python.
• Deep knowledge of asyncio, trio, or curio, and practical experience with aiohttp, FastAPI, or related frameworks.
• Proficient in debugging and profiling async systems at scale.
• Strong understanding of event loops, cooperative multitasking, cancellation, and task groups.
• Experience integrating asynchronous systems with audio processing, ASR/TTS APIs, or third-party hardware.
• Familiarity with async-safe data access patterns (e.g., Redis clients, queues, pub/sub).
• Linux proficiency and experience with Docker, Kubernetes, or other container orchestration tools.
● Preferred Qualifications:
• Experience building real-time audio systems or streaming pipelines using asyncio.
• Familiarity with structured concurrency concepts and patterns.
• Experience with graceful shutdown, lifecycle management, and watchdogs in async services.
• Knowledge of ASGI internals, WebSockets at scale, or distributed event buses (e.g., NATS, Kafka with async consumers).
• Contributions to open-source async libraries or experience scaling async systems in production.
• Availability to work during US hours at least till 5 pm ET is essential for this role.
• Candidates must have their own system/work setup for remote work.
