Full-Time
Software Engineer – Developer Infrastructure Engineer
Sesame
51-200 employees
Conveys real-time conversational voice interfaces
Compensation Overview
$175k - $280k/yr
San Francisco, CA, USA + 2 more
More locations: New York, NY, USA | Bellevue, WA, USA
In Person
 DevOps & Infrastructure (1) |
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- You're a thoughtful software engineer who also loves infrastructure. You write clean, well-designed code and care about the experience of the people using what you build
- You've worked on CI/CD systems and have real experience solving the hard problems — slow builds, flaky tests, painful merges — with durable solutions
- You've built developer tooling that other engineers genuinely wanted to use: self-serve frameworks, CLI tools, build systems, environment setup, or debugging tools
- You're comfortable in Python and/or TypeScript — our monorepo leans on both
- You have 5+ years in software engineering, with meaningful time spent on developer infrastructure or tooling
- Automation is your default. Doing something manually twice feels like a problem worth solving
- You think from the perspective of the engineers using your work. Developer experience isn't a buzzword to you — it's the whole job
- Own the developer experience from onboarding through deploy — dev environments, build systems, CI/CD, test infrastructure, and deploy tooling
- Build frameworks and tooling that make CI fast, reliable, and effortless. Engineers shouldn't have to think about it — it should just work
- Design self-serve tooling that lets product and ML engineers move quickly without filing tickets or waiting on you
- Give teams clear, reliable visibility into what's in production, when it shipped, and how it's performing
- Explore what it means to bring AI-assisted intelligence into developer tooling — this is a genuinely exciting frontier, and we're approaching it thoughtfully
- Keep the complex systems that support rapid development healthy: build systems, dependency management, test infrastructure, and developer environments all need ongoing care
- Think creatively about what a performance-sensitive stack — GPUs, co-located servers, real-time requirements — means for the developer environment. There's no established playbook here, and that's part of the appeal
- Monorepo tooling and build systems (e.g. Bazel, Pants, Moonrepo, Nx, or similar approaches)
- Cloud-based development environments (e.g. Coder, Codespaces, devcontainers)
- CI platform depth — going beyond workflow files into managing runners, optimising costs, and building custom tooling
- Containerised builds and local/CI parity (e.g. Docker, Dagger)
- Deploy pipeline patterns: canary deployments, feature flags, automated rollbacks, GitOps
- AI coding tools — not just using them, but configuring, customising, or building tooling around them
- Security engineering in developer workflows: dependency scanning, secrets management, supply chain controls
- GCP experience
Sesame creates voice-based companions that blend into daily life by combining advanced software with lightweight wearables. Its Conversational Speech Model (CSM) understands context in real time and responds with fluid, human-like timing, including pauses, breaths, and emotion. The hardware pieces include sleek glasses that stream high-quality audio from the voice companion, creating an always-present, non-intrusive assistant. The system integrates software, machine learning, and hardware to offer a voice interface that feels more like chatting with a friend than issuing commands. Unlike many voice systems that sound robotic, Sesame focuses on natural, intuitive speech that fits into everyday activities. The company aims to turn voice into a rich, everyday interface and provide a personal, conversational companion that is easily integrated into daily life.
Company Size
51-200
Company Stage
Series B
Total Funding
$317.7M
Headquarters
San Francisco, California
Founded
2023
Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- One million beta users validated strong consumer interest and engagement.
- Open-sourced CSM-1B can attract developers and accelerate ecosystem adoption.
- Low-latency speech supports natural hands-free use in wellness, tutoring, and companion products.
What critics are saying
- Meta, Google, and Apple can outscale Sesame in smart glasses distribution.
- CSM remains mostly English, blocking rapid international expansion.
- Open-sourcing CSM-1B weakens Sesame's model moat and invites fast imitation.
What makes Sesame unique
- CSM generates humanlike pauses, laughter, and mid-sentence tone shifts.
- Sesame combines voice companions with lightweight smart glasses planned for 2027.
- The iOS app already offers four agents with distinct voices, memory, and personalities.
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Your Connections
People at Sesame who can refer or advise you
Benefits
401(k) Company Match
Health Insurance
Dental Insurance
Vision Insurance
Unlimited Paid Time Off
Flexible Work Hours
Company News
Former Oculus execs' AI smart glasses startup 'Sesame' raises $250M Series B funding. October 24, 2025 From roadtovr Sesame, an AI and smart glasses startup founded by former Oculus execs, raised $250 million in Series B funding, which the company hopes will accelerate its voice-based AI. The news. As first reported by Tech Crunch, lead investors in Sesame's Series B include Spark Capital and Sequoia Capital, bringing the company's overall funding to $307.6 million, according to Crunchbase data. Exiting stealth earlier this year, Sesame was founded by Oculus co-founder and former CEO Brendan Iribe, former Oculus hardware architect Ryan Brown, and Ankit Kumar, former CTO of AR startup Ubiquity6. Additionally, Oculus co-founder Nate Mitchell announced in June he was joining Sesame as Chief Product Officer, which he noted was to "help bring computers to life." Sesame is currently working on an AI assistant along with a pair of lightweight smart glasses. Its AI assistant aims to be "the perfect AI conversational partner," Sequoia Capital says in a recent post. "Sesame's vision is to build an ambient interface that is always available and has contextual awareness of the world around you," Sequoia says. "To achieve that, Sesame is creating their own lightweight, fashion-forward AI-enabled glasses designed to be worn all day. They're intentionally crafted - fit for everyday life." Sesame is currently taking signups for beta access to its AI assistants Miles and Maya in an iOS app, and also has a public preview showcasing a 'call' function that allows you to speak with the chatbots. My take. Love it or hate it, AI is going to be baked into everything in the future, as contextually aware systems hope to bridge the gap between user input and the expectation of timely and intelligent output. That's increasingly important when the hardware doesn't include a display, requiring the user to interface almost entirely by voice. Some things to watch out for: if the company does commercialize a pair of smart glasses to champion its AI assistant, it will be competing for some pretty exclusive real estate that companies like Meta, Google, Samsung, and Apple (still unconfirmed) are currently gunning for. That puts Sesame at somewhat of a disadvantage if it hopes to go it alone, but not if it's hoping for a timely exit into the coming wave of smart glasses by being acquired by any of the above. There's also some pretty worrying precedent in the rear view mirror too: e.g. Humane's AI Pin or AI Friend necklace, both of which were publicly lambasted for essentially releasing hardware that could just as easily have been apps on your smartphone. Granted, Sesame hasn't shown off its smart glasses hardware yet, so there's no telling what the company hopes to bring to the table outside of the having an easy-to-wear pair of off-ear headphones for all-day AI stuff - that, to me, would be the worst case scenario, as Meta refines its own smart glasses in partnership with EssilorLuxottica, Google releases Android XR frames with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker, Samsung releases its own Android XR glasses, and Apple does... something. We don't know yet. Whatever the case, I'm looking forward to it, if only based on the company's combined experience in XR, which I'd argue any startup would envy as the race to build the next big computing platform truly takes off.
Sesame AI raises $250 million for smart glasses. Sesame AI, a startup founded by Brendan Iribe, has secured $250 million in Series B funding, co-led by Sequoia Capital and Spark Capital, to develop its innovative voice assistant technology integrated into smart glasses. The company, established in June 2023 by Iribe, the former Oculus VR co-founder, boasts a team with a strong background in AI, speech technology, and consumer hardware. Iribe serves as CEO, alongside Ankit Kumar as CTO and Ryan Brown as a founding engineer. Sesame AI is focused on creating smart glasses with advanced conversational AI, featuring AI-powered voices named "Maya" and "Miles." These voices are designed to mimic the naturalism, rhythm, and emotional expression of human dialogue, setting a new standard for voice assistant technology. Following a highly successful early demo that garnered significant public interest, Sesame AI has launched a beta version of its smart glasses. The demo was remarkably popular, with over one million people accessing it and engaging in more than five million minutes of conversation with the AI. This level of engagement underscores the public's enthusiasm for Sesame's innovative approach to voice interaction. Sesame has also made its base AI model, CSM-1B, available for commercial use under an Apache 2.0 license. The 1-billion-parameter model powers the "Maya" assistant and is notable for its permissive licensing, which allows for broad application with few restrictions. By making CSM-1B accessible, Sesame is fostering a collaborative environment that could accelerate advancements in AI technology. The company's product is positioned as a lightweight, user-friendly device that prioritizes natural speech interaction. This approach is a deliberate strategy to differentiate Sesame's smart glasses from the more expensive and bulky VR headsets offered by competitors such as Meta and Apple. By focusing on ease of use and natural interaction, Sesame aims to carve out a unique niche in the market for its innovative smart glasses.
Former Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe’s new startup, Sesame, is building AI-powered smart glasses with natural, humanlike voice interaction. Backed by Sequoia and Spark, the company also launched an invite-only iOS beta to preview its conversational AI.
Sesame AI startup by Oculus founders secures $250M and launches beta. News summary. Sesame, a conversational AI startup founded by former Oculus co-founders, has successfully raised $250 million in a Series B funding round. The company, led by Brendan Iribe and Ankit Kumar, is focused on developing a personal AI agent that communicates with users using natural, human-like speech. This AI technology will be integrated into smart glasses designed for daily use, allowing users to interact through voice commands. The startup, having emerged from stealth earlier this year, has already seen significant engagement with its AI voices, 'Maya' and 'Miles', which have been accessed by over a million users, generating substantial conversational interaction. The funding round included investment from Sequoia and Spark, among others. Additionally, Sesame has opened a beta for its iOS app, offering select testers an opportunity to experience and interact with the AI technology, while maintaining confidentiality on their testing experiences. Story coverage.
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