We've raised a $4.2 million seed round from a terrific group of investors that includes Khosla Ventures, Zhu Venture, and Y Combinator to build the best product and win in the space.

As a Founding Engineer, you won’t be a cog in the machine; you’ll be the engine propelling our product forward. You’ll shape core systems, experiment with state-of-the-art AI models, and see your code used directly by real customers every day. Your work will be the voice of our product—offering customers DELIGHTFUL ordering experiences.

Tech Stack:

Essentials: NodeJS, TypeScript, Python, NextJS
AI: OpenAI, Antropic, open source models, STT, TTS, etc.

What you might work on:

AI/ML:
- Experiment with and evaluate the latest models
- LLM finetune, distillation, and deployment on the edge
- Train audio classification models.
- Improve STT models.
- Evaluation (stt, llm, latency, …, experience)
Core system:
- Assess the latest tools and frameworks.
- Build infrastructure to insure 99.9% up-time
- Create an embedded device that streams audio between mic & speaker and our server on the cloud.
Integrations: Quick service restaurant vertical integrations (Point of Sale, Kitchen Display, drive-thru communication systems).

Responsibilities:

Non-negotiables:

Can-Do Attitude: Our only real limit is the laws of physics.
In-person, in SF. 20th street in the Mission.
Living to work > working to live. This is more than a job.

Engineering:

Ownership Mentality: Take full ownership of projects from ideation to deployment and maintenance.
Rapid Prototyping: Build new products and features extremely quickly.
Scalability and reliability Focus: Build systems that can scale as the company grows and accommodate increasing user demand.
Code Quality: Ensure high standards of code quality, testing, and documentation to maintain long-term maintainability and reliability.

Non-Engineering:

Product Ownership: Lead new projects.
Customer-Centric Approach: Gather feedback directly from end-users and incorporate it into the product.
Culture Building: Play a crucial role in defining and fostering the company’s engineering culture.
Continuous Learning: Stay up-to-date with emerging technologies and tools that could enhance the product and processes.
Partnerships: Collaborate with external vendors and partners to integrate cutting-edge solutions into the stack.

Let’s chat if you:

Are excited about Voice AI.
Believe no technical challenges are too hard to solve.
Want to grind with us, staying close to customers to iterate fast and solve their problems.
Are fast at 0 to 1, but also thoughtful about how your technical decisions will scale over time.

What we offer:

Adventure + impact
We’ll pay you to move within a 10 minutes walk from the office.
Competitive salary (140k - 200k) + Generous equity (0.5% - 1.5%).
Health Insurance (including dental & vision).
Meals
Gym membership

PS:

Humans have been communicating with voice for thousands of years. Over the past year, we’ve seen unprecedented innovation in large language models. It’s now no longer a secret that this new generation of conversational engines will leapfrog all legacy NLP systems. The future will see Voice AI ubiquitous across all industries, taking food orders, making reservations, answering repetitive questions. However, this won’t happen without definite optimists who will push the world towards this reality. As of today, there are many research teams working on model primitives. There are many engineering teams working on the infrastructure layer. During this “gold rush”, people have pre-emptively started selling shovels… but we are the gold miners? We are the pragmatic product builders that will do the gritty work of diffusing technology into traditional industries.

Lilac Labs

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