A bit about Cantina:

Cantina, founded by Sean Parker, is an invite only playground that puts AI into the hands of creators and allows them to bring any idea to life as a social bot that can be experienced with friends directly in the Cantina and also shared across the internet. 

It's the first place where people can create, explore, and chat live with personality-driven AI bots together with their friends. People can choose from Cantina’s collection of thousands of unique bots, or build awesome AI bots from scratch with just a few prompts. 

While a lot of AI focuses on improving productivity and efficiency, we believe our AI bots will drive the future of entertainment on the internet and we’re excited about the creative potential they will unlock for everyone. 

The Cantina is building a new kind of social AI where people can not only choose their own adventures, but make their own adventures.  Create, share and set AI bots free!

A bit about the role:

The media team at Cantina is creating one of the most advanced platforms for real-time and streaming media in the world. We're passionate about building high-performance, high-quality software and services, with a mandate that covers everything from globally distributed infrastructure to highly optimized, device-level audio and video processing frameworks. We are looking for engineers who are excited about working with exceptional people on challenging problems.

We're looking for an enthusiastic Software Engineer to help us provide a compelling experience for users who want to chat with friends and AI-powered bots. In this role, you will extend and improve the audio and video infrastructure that is at the heart of enabling real-time interactions in the Cantina app. 

A bit about the work:

• Enhance and extend the Cantina media platform.

• Add new features and capabilities to enable new ways for users to interact with their friends and AI bots through voice and video.

• Improve and maintain the custom WebRTC-based frameworks we use to provide media services for iOS, Android, and web clients.

• Collect and analyze metrics relating to system performance and user behavior.

• Participate in detailed and constructive design and code reviews.

• Collaborate with other members of the team to deliver new features and enhancements on a regular basis.

• Work with application development teams to define APIs they can use to integrate with the media stack.

A bit about you:

• BS or MS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field; or equivalent experience.

• Experience with C or C++.

• Strong computer science fundamentals, including familiarity with data structures and concurrent / multithreaded programming.

• Exposure to system programming concepts, including network protocols; memory management; and distributed systems fundamentals.

• Object-oriented programming and design skills.

• Interest in solving challenging, hard-to-pin-down problems.

• Excellent communications skills.

Additional Skills

These are not required, but will help you hit the ground running.

• Previous experience with WebRTC, streaming protocols, or other media-related technologies.

• Familiarity with audio or video processing techniques and algorithms.

• Experience developing software for iOS and Android.

• Familiarity with building services using Node.js.

• Familiarity with artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques, particularly in relation to speech recognition and synthesis.

Location:

We have offices located in Sunnyvale, CA and Brooklyn, NY. While we offer fully remote and hybrid employment opportunities, our Media Engineering team strongly desires candidates to be available (or willing to relocate) to work in the Bay Area. For reference, 95% of the Media Engineering team works from the Bay Area.

Pay Equity: 

In compliance with Pay Transparency laws, the base salary range for this role is between $120,000-180,000. When determining compensation, a number of factors will be considered, including skills, experience, job scope, location, and competitive compensation market data.

Benefits:

• Flexible working arrangements – remote, office, or hybrid – the choice is often yours. We are open to ensuring quality candidates don’t experience barriers to success.

• Health Care –  99% company-paid health care, dental and vision (through amazing providers).  Taking care of our employees and their covered dependents is one way we demonstrate we care.

• Monthly Stipend  – Used for food, fun, travel, education to name a few… In general, almost anything goes.

• Mental wellbeing support – Access to an EAP (personal issues/financial/substance counseling), online  therapy for mental health, is one more way we demonstrate our care.

• Equity – Full-time employees are rewarded with equity – we all have a shared stake in Cantina’s success.

• 401(K) - Eligible to participate on day one of employment – save for your future!

• Short and Long Term Disability - Company paid.

• Life Insurance - 1x base pay, 100% company paid.

• Maternity/Paternity/Adoptive Leave - Generous maternity/paternity benefits

• PTO 15 paid PTO/vacation days per calendar year.

• Holidays - 13 paid holidays per calendar year.

• Sick Pay - 9 sick days per calendar year.

• Discounts - through Smart Perks