Senior Applied Research Engineer - Media Quality

Own research-to-production work across audio/video signal processing, perceptual quality, and media intelligence.

Partner with teams to integrate prototypes into production systems and decision-making across areas like music and video information retrieval and quality-aware processing.

Work across the full media pipeline, from encoding and delivery to playback, buffering, and synchronization.

Build evaluation frameworks and support media platform and codec decisions grounded in measurement.

Design perceptual studies, develop tooling that connects quality metrics to real user experience outcomes.

Collaborate with multi-functional teams, turning research insights into scalable capabilities used across Spotify.

Help improve how we evaluate and enhance media quality across the platform.

Drive high-impact initiatives from idea through to measurable outcomes.

You have 8+ years of experience in applied research and engineering in media technology, audio, or video.

You bring deep expertise in audio and/or video, with working knowledge across both domains.

You understand media systems end-to-end, from backend processing through to client-side playback.

You have strong foundations in signal processing and experience with perceptual quality or feature design.

You are comfortable working in Python and have experience with C++ or similar languages.

You have experience running perceptual evaluations or quality benchmarking.

You enjoy building systems that move from research into real-world impact.

You collaborate effectively across disciplines and communicate complex ideas clearly.

You are curious, pragmatic, and motivated by solving meaningful problems.