Applied AI Engineer - Consumer Robotics & Voice Systems

Location: San Francisco, CA (on-site/hybrid, 5 days/week) Type: Full-time hours, hourly contract-to-hire (W-2) Pay: $40–$80/hour, depending on experience Schedule: 40 hours/week Expected duration: 1–3 months, with possible extension Start: As soon as possible About Rhem Rhem Labs is a YC-backed consumer robotics company making personal health companions for the home. We're working on our first two products:

• Rhemy is a tabletop companion robot you can talk to. It helps you keep track of your health, manage appointments and routines, call family, and get everyday tasks done.
• Rhosie is a droid with two arms and a wheeled base. We're building it to bring physical help into the home, not just conversation.

For both, the challenge starts with making a robot that can understand you naturally, remember what you need, and follow through. What you'll work on

• Build and integrate full-duplex voice models that listen and speak naturally, including streaming audio, barge-in, interruptions, turn-taking, and latency optimization.
• Design AI orchestration so the assistant can select tools, call APIs, execute multi-step tasks, and reliably manage background work across conversations.
• Run and debug the voice and agent stack on Android and embedded hardware, including microphones, speakers, audio pipelines, and device-level integration.
• Test on the actual tabletop device, identify failures end-to-end, and ship improvements quickly with the founding team.

What we're looking for

• Real-time voice AI experience: hands-on work with duplex speech-to-speech models or comparable low-latency streaming voice systems. You understand audio streaming, turn-taking, and interruption handling.
• AI orchestration experience: you've built agent workflows with tool/function calling, state management, async jobs, failure handling, and real-world integrations—not just chat demos.
• Android + device integration: experience developing or integrating software on Android, and comfort debugging audio and software on physical embedded devices.
• Strong Python skills; ability to own, debug, and ship features independently.
• Available on-site in San Francisco, 40 hours per week, with an ASAP start.
• Nice to have: Kotlin/Java, C++, WebRTC, Android audio APIs, audio DSP/echo cancellation, or embedded Linux. Robotics experience is not required.

Why join You'll work directly with the founders on some of the hardest problems in voice AI and consumer robotics. You'll own core parts of Rhemy's voice and agent systems, ship code directly to hardware, and have the freedom to make real technical decisions. We're hiring initially on a 1–3 month contract, with the opportunity to transition into a full-time founding engineering role as we grow.