Audio Systems Engineer, AR/VR Research

Employer

Job Description

Facebook's mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. Through our family of apps and services, we're building a different kind of company that connects billions of people around the world, gives them ways to share what matters most to them, and helps bring people closer together. Whether we're creating new products or helping a small business expand its reach, people at Facebook are builders at heart. Our global teams are constantly iterating, solving problems, and working together to empower people around the world to build community and connect in meaningful ways. Together, we can help people build stronger communities - we're just getting started.

Facebook Reality Labs Research brings together a world-class team of researchers, developers, and engineers to create the future of virtual and augmented reality. The Audio Research team is focused on harnessing the power of AR and VR to make virtual sounds indistinguishable from reality and give audio superpowers to billions of people, forever transforming the way we work, play, and connect. We believe that a key component of this mission is to improve and enhance human hearing for people at all levels of hearing ability in all aspects of their daily life.We are looking for an Audio Systems Engineer to join our growing interdisciplinary team working to solve difficult problems at the intersection of digital signal processing, acoustics, hearing sciences, auditory perception, multimodal interaction, and artificial intelligence. In this position, you will focus on integrating the latest research technologies to an embedded system in order to prototype new audio-forward features which extend beyond the capability of existing consumer audio devices. You will demonstrate the value of such features by evaluating their subjective and objective performance and developing compelling experience demos. You will collaborate closely with a cross-functional team of engineers, research scientists, and experience designers to pursue integration paths that optimize for performance and user experience. These advanced development efforts ultimately aim to introduce new audio technologies to future AR products by demonstrating their experiential value and product viability.

Responsibilities
  • Prototype AR audio experiences by integrating technology solutions that leverage the sensor capability of wearable AR devices for audio capture and render, image processing, and motion tracking
  • Devise tuning schemes for audio algorithms and end-to-end signal chain on embedded systems to deliver an optimized user experience
  • Design, implement, and conduct benchmark performance tests to evaluate the objective and subjective performance of audio-centric prototype systems, applying the end-to-end understanding of hardware and software subsystems
Minimum Qualification
  • Master’s degree in Acoustics, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering with 2+ years of industry experience in audio consumer electronics or audio technology development, or equivalent combination of education and experience
  • 2+ years of using MATLAB, Python, or other languages to interface with audio hardware and process data for visualization and analysis
  • Intimate understanding of end-to-end analog and digital signal path in an audio hardware device and its components including transducers, ADC, DSP, DAC, and amplifier
  • Proficiency in DSP fundamentals and concepts that are commonly encountered in real-time audio algorithms such as ANC, noise suppression, echo cancellation, EQ, speaker protection, and beamformer
  • Demonstrated experience in designing and performing acoustic experiments in controlled laboratory settings
  • Demonstrated experience in designing and performing audio tests using audio lab equipment and software such as HATS, Audio Precision, SoundCheck, ACQUA
Preferred Qualification
  • 5+ years of experience of systems engineer role catering to embedded platforms
  • Demonstrated experience of shipping audio consumer electronics devices as a systems engineer
  • Demonstrated experience of tuning and deploying adaptive audio algorithms on audio consumer electronics devices
  • Demonstrated experience of implementing real-time audio models on Simulink RealTime, AudioWeaver, or MaxMSP
  • Demonstrated experience with audio algorithms for hearing correction and enhancement
  • Demonstrated experience in using embedded Linux OS
  • Demonstrated experience in bringing up silicon evaluation boards and relevant tuning interfaces
Facebook is proud to be an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Facebook is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities in our recruiting process. If you need any assistance or accommodations due to a disability, please let us know at accommodations-ext@fb.com.