The mission of Speechify is to make sure that reading is never a barrier to learning.

Over 50 million people use Speechify’s text-to-speech products to turn whatever they’re reading – PDFs, books, Google Docs, news articles, websites – into audio, so they can read faster, read more, and remember more. Speechify’s text-to-speech reading products include its iOS app, Android App, Mac App, Chrome Extension, and Web App. Google recently named Speechify the Chrome Extension of the Year and Apple named Speechify its 2025 Design Award winner for Inclusivity.  

Today, nearly 200 people around the globe work on Speechify in a 100% distributed setting – Speechify has no office. These include frontend and backend engineers, AI research scientists, and others from Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, leading PhD programs like Stanford, high growth startups like Stripe, Vercel, Bolt, and many founders of their own companies.

Overview

The responsibilities of our Platform team include building and maintaining all backend services, including, but not limited to, payments, analytics, subscriptions, new products, text to speech, and external APIs.

This is a key role and ideal for someone who thinks strategically, enjoys fast-paced environments, is passionate about making product decisions, and has experience building great user experiences that delight users.

We are a flat organization that allows anyone to become a leader by showing excellent technical skills and delivering results consistently and fast. Work ethic, solid communication skills, and obsession with winning are paramount. 

Our interview process involves several technical interviews and we aim to complete them within 1 week. 

What You’ll Do

• Design, develop, and maintain robust APIs including public TTS API, internal APIs like Payment, Subscription, Auth and Consumption Tracking, ensuring they meet business and scalability requirements
• Oversee the full backend API landscape, enhancing and optimizing for performance and maintainability
• Collaborate on B2B solutions, focusing on customization and integration needs for enterprise clients
• Work closely with cross-functional teams to align backend architecture with overall product strategy and user experience

An Ideal Candidate Should Have

• Proven experience in backend development: TS/Node (required)
• Direct experience with GCP and knowledge of AWS, Azure, or other cloud providers
• Efficiency in ideation and implementation, prioritizing tasks based on urgency and impact
• Preferred: Experience with Docker and containerized deployments
• Preferred: Proficiency in deploying high availability applications on Kubernetes

What We Offer

• A dynamic environment where your contributions shape the company and its products
• A team that values innovation, intuition, and drive
• Autonomy, fostering focus and creativity
• The opportunity to have a significant impact in a revolutionary industry
• Competitive compensation, a welcoming atmosphere, and a commitment to an exceptional asynchronous work culture
• The privilege of working on a product that changes lives, particularly for those with learning differences like dyslexia, ADD, and more
• An active role at the intersection of artificial intelligence and audio – a rapidly evolving tech domain

Think you’re a good fit for this job? 

Tell us more about yourself and why you're interested in the role when you apply.
And don’t forget to include links to your portfolio and LinkedIn.

Not looking but know someone who would make a great fit? 

Refer them! 

Speechify is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. 

Speechify does not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or other legally protected status.

Who we are:

Raft is building a real-time data platform for the Department of Defense (DoD), aimed at enhancing operators' awareness of critical events, including instances like the Chinese balloon and Cessna over the White House incidents. Central to this data platform is the aggregation of real-time data from over 750 sensors. This data is subsequently enriched, rendered queryable, and ultimately presented as a common operational picture to empower operators in making time critical and pertinent decisions. Our system efficiently handles the processing of over a billion events daily, all achieved with millisecond-level latency. Key technologies include Kafka, Kafka Streams, Pinot, Java, Scala, and Kubernetes. Your involvement in this role will encompass hands-on collaboration with a team of accomplished individuals, collectively striving towards excellence.

What you will do: 

• Architect, develop and implement end-to-end cluster and application lifecycles 
• Work with clients architecting, developing and implementing Kubernetes or Docker solutions both in the Cloud and on-premises
• Develop and implement CI/CD pipelines 
• Implement GitOps for Software Delivery 

What we are looking for: 

• 3+ years of relevant DOD industry experience 
• 3+ years' experience with Docker and Kubernetes, provisioning production clusters and maintaining their compliance.
• Experience with building and managing data-intensive platforms using popular streaming technologies such as Kafka, Pinot, or FlinkExperience in data management technologies including ETL processing, data governance, and data storage
• Experience with AWS and/or other cloud computing solutions
• Experienced with building, deployment, release automation, or orchestration 
• Experience with Kubernetes monitoring (i.e. Prometheus, Grafana) and logging (i.e. Fluentbit, Kibana, Loki) solutions
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code (e.g. Terraform, Ansible, etc.) 
• Experience with configuring CI/CD pipelines using GitLab Runners 
• Obtain Security+ within the first 90 days of employment with Raft
• Ability to obtain and maintain a Secret clearance
• Ability to travel up to 25%

Highly preferred:

• Solid understanding of Helm Charts 
• Experience using a variety of package managers/dependency managers including Maven, Gradle, NPM, and Yarn 
• Knowledge of Istio, 
• Experience with supporting enterprise Cloud applications or infrastructure 
•  Experience in automation languages like Python or GoLang
•  Comfortable provisioning and debugging complex CI/CD pipelines

Clearance Requirements:

• Active Secret security clearance

Salary Range: $140,000 - $190,000

• The determination of compensation is predicated upon a candidate's comprehensive experience, demonstrated skill, and proven abilities

Work Type:

• Hybrid in Rome, NY or NCR (National Capital Region - DC)
• Domestic travel up to 35% to customer sites

What we will offer you: 

• Highly competitive salary
• Fully covered healthcare, dental, and vision coverage
• 401(k) and company match
• Take as you need PTO + 11 paid holidays
• Education & training benefits
• Generous Referral Bonuses
• And More!

Our Vision Statement: 

We bridge the gap between humans and data through radical transparency and our obsession with the mission. 

Our Customer Obsession: 

We will approach every deliverable like it's a product. We will adopt a customer-obsessed mentality. As we grow, and our footprint becomes larger, teams and employees will treat each other not only as teammates but customers. We must live the customer-obsessed mindset, always. This will help us scale and it will translate to the interactions that our Rafters have with their clients and other product teams that they integrate with. Our culture will enable our success and set us apart from other companies.

How do we get there? 

Public-sector modernization is critical for us to live in a better world. We, at Raft, want to innovate and solve complex problems. And, if we are successful, our generation and the ones that follow us will live in a delightful, efficient, and accessible world where out-of-box thinking, and collaboration is a norm. 

Raft’s core philosophy is Ubuntu: I Am, Because We are. We support our “nadi” by elevating the other Rafters. We work as a hyper collaborative team where each team member brings a unique perspective, adding value that did not exist before. People make Raft special. We celebrate each other and our cognitive and cultural diversity. We are devoted to our practice of innovation and collaboration.