Full-Time

Senior Software Engineer

Backend, Media Capture

Updated on 8/1/2026

Read AI

Read AI

51-200 employees

AI summaries and communication analytics

Compensation Overview

$180k - $210k/yr

+ Equity

No H1B Sponsorship

Seattle, WA, USA

In Person

Category
Software Engineering (1)

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Requirements
  • Proven experience building software solutions that perform at scale
  • Technical breadth across more than one domain (backend, frontend, devops, or data engineering), with a willingness to dive into whatever needs solving
  • Adaptability to learn new technologies and stacks as needed
  • A problem-solving mindset driven by curiosity and creativity
  • Resilience and self-reliance: comfortable operating with autonomy on ambiguous problems
  • Strong communication skills across technical and non-technical audiences
  • Read AI does not provide visa sponsorship for this role
Responsibilities
  • Help design and build our next-generation live media pipeline, focused on low-latency handling of raw streaming data
  • Contribute to features like live transcription and live notes that depend on this pipeline's speed and reliability
  • Maintain and improve the meeting agents that join and capture Zoom, Meet, and Teams calls
  • Debug and resolve edge cases in real-time connections with third-party meeting providers
  • Build monitoring and alerting to catch issues before they affect users
  • Tune FFmpeg/GStreamer processing pipelines for cost efficiency without sacrificing quality or latency
  • Improve how raw audio/video is stored and handed off to downstream data consumers
  • Work closely with product managers, designers, and other engineers to bring data-driven insights from concept to reality
  • Translate complex technical issues for non-technical stakeholders
Desired Qualifications
  • Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure), especially auto-scaling and resource optimization for large systems
  • Proficiency with streaming protocols/standards (e.g., WebRTC, MoQ) and media processing libraries (e.g., FFmpeg, GStreamer)
  • In-depth knowledge of HTML/CSS and browser rendering
  • Prior experience in a startup or fast-growing environment

Read AI provides an AI-driven platform that boosts productivity in workplace communications by acting as a copilot for meetings, emails, and messages. It integrates with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Slack, Gmail, Salesforce, and HubSpot to analyze conversations, unify data, and surface actionable insights. The core features include meeting transcriptions, summaries, video highlights, identification of action items and key questions, and real-time engagement and sentiment analytics, with email threading summaries and response drafting. It also creates a unified, searchable knowledge base across platforms to support deal progression and revenue intelligence, tying communication data to CRM data. The goal is to increase knowledge worker productivity by automating and enhancing how teams engage with information and decisions across meetings, messages, and CRM data.

Company Size

51-200

Company Stage

Series B

Total Funding

$81M

Headquarters

Seattle, Washington

Founded

2021

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Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • Brazil demand is strong, with over 1 million registered users and top-four market status.[6]
  • Brazil revenue reportedly grew 291% year over year, supporting localized expansion.[6]
  • Freemium distribution plus a high Brazil free-to-paid conversion rate can drive monetization.[6]

What critics are saying

  • Microsoft and Google can bundle summaries and transcription into existing suites.[3][6]
  • Behavioral inference and sentiment tracking invite privacy and procurement resistance.[1][2]
  • Localization execution in Brazil is critical; weak support or payments would slow conversion.[6]

What makes Read AI unique

  • Read AI analyzes facial and verbal cues to score meeting sentiment and engagement.[1]
  • Its products extend beyond notes into Search Copilot across emails, chats, and CRMs.[6][8]
  • Ada drafts replies and coordinates scheduling using meetings, knowledge bases, and web searches.[6]

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Benefits

Health Insurance

Performance Bonus

Unlimited Paid Time Off

Parental Leave

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

0%

1 year growth

0%

2 year growth

-1%
TechCrunch
Feb 26th, 2026
Read AI launches email 'digital twin' assistant Ada to manage schedules and answer questions

Read AI has launched Ada, an AI-powered email assistant it calls a "digital twin", to help users manage schedules, answer questions and handle out-of-office replies. The feature is available to all users who can activate it by emailing [email protected]. Ada can coordinate meeting times by responding to email threads with availability options and negotiating alternative slots. It answers queries using company knowledge bases, meeting data and internet searches, whilst preparing draft responses for user approval before sending sensitive information. CEO David Shim said the assistant learns context as users connect more services. Read AI now has over 5 million monthly active users, with 50,000 daily sign-ups. The company has raised over $81 million in funding and plans to expand Ada to Slack and Teams soon.

Block385
Feb 20th, 2026
Why these startup CEOs don't think AI will replace human roles

Why these startup CEOs don't think AI will replace human roles. The CEOs of Read AI and Lucidya told TechCrunch at Web Summit Qatar that they see AI tools replacing tasks, rather than workers.

TechCrunch
Feb 19th, 2026
Startup CEOs say AI will replace tasks, not jobs, as humans remain crucial

Startup CEOs David Shim of Read AI and Abdullah Asiri of Lucidya believe AI will transform tasks rather than eliminate human roles. Speaking at Web Summit Qatar, Shim compared AI to navigation apps, noting humans remain crucial decision-makers even as tools automate routine work. Asiri said AI replaces tasks, not roles, with customer support agents at client companies transitioning to supervisory and business development positions. Shim noted meeting notetakers free workers to focus on higher-value activities like decision-making and customer response. Both companies use AI to maintain lean teams whilst serving large user bases. Read AI's five-person customer service team supports millions of monthly users. The founders emphasised hiring "AI native" employees who can build agents to enhance productivity, aiming to "scale outcomes without scaling headcounts". They also stressed transparency when deploying AI in customer interactions.

SiliconANGLE Media
Sep 17th, 2025
Read AI's new agents help employees stay on top of work by analyzing all their communications

With the launch of its Agentic Workflow Suite today, Read AI says it's providing users with a more comprehensive AI assistant.

GeekWire
Mar 12th, 2025
Geekwire Awards: Ceo Of The Year Finalists Share Tips On Leading Startups

Coverage of the 2025 GeekWire Awards, presented by Astound Business Solutions , the PNW’s annual startup and technology awards.From top left, clockwise: Zuper CEO Anand Subbaraj; Highspot CEO Robert Wahbe; Ai2 CEO Ali Farhadi; Syndio CEO Maria Colacurcio; and Read AI CEO David Shim.Get close to your customers. Hire the right people. And stay optimistic.These are some of the tactics used by CEOs leading some of the top tech startups and organizations within the Seattle tech industry.The finalists for CEO of the Year at the 2025 GeekWire Awards are: Maria Colacurcio, CEO at Syndio; Ali Farhadi, CEO at Ai2; David Shim, CEO at Read AI; and Anand Subbaraj, CEO at Zuper; and Robert Wahbe, CEO at Highspot.Last year’s winner for this category was Ozan Unlu, CEO of Edge Delta, a Seattle-based software startup that helps engineering and security teams analyze data.The GeekWire Awards recognize the top innovators and companies in Pacific Northwest technology. Finalists in this category and others were selected based on community nominations, along with input from GeekWire Awards judges. Community voting across all categories will continue until March 23, combined with feedback from judges to determine the winner in each category.We'll announce the winners on April 30 at the GeekWire Awards, presented by Astound Business Solutions. There are a limited number of half-table and full-table sponsorships available to attend the event