Senior Python / Edge AI Developer

Location: Remote EUROPE (working with UK & Polish team) 

Type: Full-time Contract (initial 3 months leading to longer engagement)

About the Role:

We're building a hotel voice-assistant product that brings together Python services, on-device AI inference, speech and audio processing, touchscreen interfaces, connected hardware, and cloud messaging — all running on physical devices deployed in real hotel rooms.

We're looking for a pragmatic, full-stack product engineer who's comfortable working across this range of disciplines and can turn evolving product requirements into software that's reliable, maintainable, and genuinely runs well on real hardware, not just in a dev environment.

This is a hands-on role at an early-stage, fast-moving hardware startup. You'll be working close to the metal — literally — diagnosing issues that span application code, the OS, networking, and connected devices, while also shaping the architecture of a product that's still evolving.

What You'll Be Doing:

 

• Designing and building production Python services and APIs (FastAPI, HTTP, event-driven/message-based communication) that power the Jasper voice assistant.
• Integrating AI and ML capabilities into a real, shipping product — model APIs, local inference engines, and agent/tool-calling workflows.
• Building resilient integrations with external services, handling timeouts, failures, retries, and async responses gracefully.
• Working with PostgreSQL and SQLAlchemy (or comparable tools) to design and maintain data-access layers.
• Developing and troubleshooting on Linux, including services, processes, permissions, networking, logs, and hardware-connected applications.
• Building and maintaining Docker-based packaging and deployment workflows.
• Writing automated tests and using code-quality tooling (pytest, static type checking, linting) to keep the codebase maintainable as it grows.
• Diagnosing issues across the full stack — application, OS configuration, networking, and connected hardware.
• Collaborating via Git in a team workflow, including reviewing and improving colleagues' code.
• Working closely with product, hardware, and operations colleagues to turn real-world requirements into robust technical solutions.

Essential Experience:

 

• Strong commercial experience developing production applications in Python, with a good understanding of typing, asynchronous programming, dependency management, and maintainable code structure.
• Experience designing and integrating APIs and distributed services, ideally using FastAPI, HTTP, and event-driven or message-based communication.
• Proven ability to integrate AI or machine-learning capabilities into real products, including working with model APIs, local inference engines, or agent and tool-calling workflows.
• Experience building reliable applications that interact with external services and handle timeouts, failures, retries, and asynchronous responses gracefully.
• Good understanding of software architecture principles such as separation of concerns, dependency inversion, domain modelling, and testable component design.
• Experience with relational databases and data-access layers; comfortable working with PostgreSQL and SQLAlchemy or comparable technologies.
• Strong Linux development and troubleshooting skills, including services, processes, permissions, networking, logs, and hardware-connected applications.
• Practical experience with Docker and repeatable build, packaging, or deployment workflows.
• Experience writing automated tests and using code-quality tooling such as pytest, static type checking, and linting.
• Comfortable diagnosing problems across the full system, including application code, networking, operating-system configuration, and connected hardware.
• Experience using Git within a collaborative development workflow, including reviewing and improving other developers' code.
• Able to work effectively in an evolving product environment, turning user and operational requirements into robust technical solutions.
• Clear written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain technical decisions and collaborate with product, hardware, and operational colleagues.

Nice to Have:

 

• Experience deploying software to NVIDIA Jetson, ARM64, or other resource-constrained edge-computing platforms.
• Experience with speech technology, including speech-to-text, text-to-speech, voice-activity detection, wake-word detection, or real-time audio processing.
• Familiarity with local language-model inference and orchestration technologies such as Ollama, LangChain, LangGraph, or llama.cpp.
• Experience with retrieval-augmented generation, embeddings, semantic search, and vector databases such as pgvector.
• Familiarity with the Model Context Protocol and building tools or integrations for AI agents.
• Experience with MQTT, AWS IoT Core, or similar device-to-cloud messaging platforms.
• Experience building desktop or touchscreen interfaces using Qt or PySide.
• Knowledge of audio devices and Linux audio systems such as PulseAudio, microphone arrays, noise suppression, or acoustic echo cancellation.
• Experience integrating Bluetooth and Wi-Fi provisioning on Linux, including BlueZ or D-Bus.
• C or C++ experience, particularly for performance-sensitive, embedded, or hardware-adjacent components.
• Experience packaging Linux applications as Debian packages and managing them with systemd.
• Familiarity with cross-compilation, QEMU, or multi-architecture Docker builds.
• Experience with ONNX Runtime, Faster Whisper, Kokoro, or comparable optimised inference frameworks.
• Knowledge of conversational-AI design, prompt engineering, tool selection, and safe handling of model-generated output.
• Experience designing technology for hospitality, smart-room, IoT, or other customer-facing physical environments.
• Familiarity with observability and remote fleet support, including structured logging, Sentry, and secure remote diagnostics.

Note on Requirements:

Jetson experience, speech processing, and familiarity with specific AI frameworks are genuinely nice-to-haves rather than must-haves — we don't expect one person to tick every box on day one. What matters most is strong Python engineering, solid integration skills, real Linux competence, and the ability to diagnose a complex physical product end to end. If that's you, we'd love to hear from you even if some of the "nice to have" list is unfamiliar.