Principal Audio Engineer — Global Studio & ML Pipelines

Los Angeles Metro Area, California, United States Machine Learning and AI
The voice of Siri is heard by hundreds of millions of people every day. Behind it is a production infrastructure of remarkable complexity, spanning recording projects on multiple continents, automated pipelines, and massive multilingual datasets that feed state‑of‑the‑art models. The Siri Speech team is looking for a Principal Audio Engineer to own that infrastructure, set the technical standard, and keep pushing it forward.
Description

Own the end‑to‑end technical media production pipeline from performance capture through post‑processing and ML‑compatible delivery across languages, modalities, and global studio locations. Define and enforce audio technical specifications covering acoustic standards, signal chains, format requirements, and dataset integrity for downstream modeling. Serve as the technical authority on recording systems (DAWs, analog signal chain, audio‑over‑IP, studio hardware), with the ability to configure, troubleshoot, and upgrade independently. Engineer and continuously improve production workflows; build dashboards, asset trackers, and tooling to drive efficiency and visibility across the content pipeline. Lead large‑scale data collection efforts for multimodal and multilingual AI models, and evaluate and vet partner recording facilities worldwide. Act as technical translator between creative directors, voice talent, and research/engineering teams to ensure production output meets quality and compliance requirements. Author operating procedures, quality standards, and acceptance criteria; evaluate and advocate for emerging tools and infrastructure to scale the studio’s AI‑powered capabilities.
Minimum Qualifications

10+ years of hands‑on experience in audio engineering or technical production, with a demonstrated progression of scope and responsibility across multiple disciplines.
Deep expertise with Pro Tools and professional studio environments, including hardware setup, signal flow, acoustic optimization, and troubleshooting.
Demonstrated ability to build or optimize production pipelines for scale and quality, including scripting or automation experience.
Strong analytical skills with the ability to translate complex technical requirements into actionable production processes and standards.
Excellent cross‑functional collaboration skills; equally comfortable with creative directors, voice talent, and ML engineers.
Ability to effectively teach about Studio Production workflows, technical requirements, and audio considerations to a variety of audiences, primarily studio recording engineers.
Preferred Qualifications

Degree in Audio Production, Media Production, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
Experience delivering ML‑compatible audio datasets, including familiarity with training data and model interaction, metadata integrity, and format specifications for neural speech, LLM, and ASR pipelines.
Hands‑on experience with audio over IP systems such as Dante.
Experience vetting and aligning distributed studio networks at global scale, including acoustic analysis and remediation.
Familiarity with QA tooling, database‑driven tracking systems, and lightweight frontend tooling for production workflows.
Knowledge of machine learning concepts and their application in media content production pipelines.
Experience with multilingual and multimodal media content production.
Compensation and Benefits

Base pay ranges from $171,600 to $302,200, based on skills, qualifications, experience, and location. Apple employees may also receive additional compensation such as discretionary bonuses, commissions, and relocation assistance.
Apple employees have the opportunity to become shareholders through discretionary restricted stock unit awards and a stock purchase plan at a discount. Benefits include comprehensive medical and dental coverage, retirement benefits, a range of discounted products and free services, and reimbursement for educational expenses related to career development.
Apple is an equal‑opportunity employer committed to inclusion and diversity. We seek to promote equal opportunity for all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or other legally protected characteristics.
Apple believes accessibility is a fundamental human right. The company supports accessibility across culture, benefits and digital tools, and offers reasonable accommodations for job applicants.

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