Job
Description
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.
