Software Engineer, Backend (New Grad)
Otter.ai is hiring a Software Engineer, Backend (New Grad) in Mountain View, United States. It pays $136k-$165k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Otter.ai.
Level's read on this job
- Level rates this software engineer role Builds AI ●●●●: the job is building AI systems.
- The posting mentions RAG and speech among its tools and skills.
- Level classes it as a junior role.
- Otter.ai has 23 other open roles on Level.
AI in this role
The Opportunity
We're building the next generation of AI-native product experiences, where conversations turn directly into outcomes. As a Software Engineer on our engineering teams, you’ll join one of our engineering teams and help build the systems that power meeting transcription, summarization, and collaboration for users around the world.
You’ll work on real production systems from day one. Depending on your team, that could mean working on user-facing features or the services and infrastructure behind them. You’ll partner closely with engineers, product, design, and AI teams to design, ship, and iterate.
Your Impact- Build and ship production software. Design, implement, test, and deploy features and services that serve real users at scale.
- Own problems end-to-end. Take work from idea through design, implementation, rollout, and monitoring.
- Design for real-world constraints. Make deliberate tradeoffs across latency, cost, reliability, and quality.
- Build clean, scalable systems. Develop backend services, APIs, and async workflows that are maintainable and built to evolve.
- Improve quality continuously. Use metrics, logging, user feedback, and experimentation to find problems and make systems better.
- Move quickly with modern tools. Use AI-assisted development and modern tooling to prototype and ship fast while keeping a high engineering bar.
- Has a bachelor's or master's degree in Computer Science or a related field
- Is a recent grad or has up to 1 year of experience building software, with a growing sense of how backend decisions impact user experience
- Writes clean, maintainable code in a modern language (Python, Go, Java, C++, or similar) and has a solid grasp of computer science fundamentals such as data structures, algorithms, and systems basics.
- Has some exposure to backend or systems concepts such as APIs, databases, distributed systems, or cloud infrastructure
- Thinks about outcomes, not just implementation, and cares whether what they build is reliable and useful
- Takes ownership of problems end-to-end and collaborates well across product, design, and AI disciplines
- Is comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast-moving environments and can iterate quickly on both product and technical direction
- Any experience (including coursework, projects, or internships) building backend, infrastructure, or product-facing systems
- Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP), containers, or CI/CD
- Any experience with LLM-powered features or ML systems (prompting, evaluation, RAG, speech recognition, etc.)
About Otter.ai
We are in the business of shaping the future of work. Our mission is to make conversations more valuable.
With over 1B meetings transcribed, Otter.ai is the world’s leading tool for meeting transcription, summarization, and collaboration. Using artificial intelligence, Otter generates real-time automated meeting notes, summaries, and other insights from in-person and virtual meetings - turning meetings into accessible, collaborative, and actionable data that can be shared across teams and organizations. The company is backed by early investors in Google, DeepMind, Zoom, and Tesla.
Otter.ai is an equal opportunity employer. We proudly celebrate diversity and are committed to building an inclusive and accessible workplace. We provide reasonable accommodations for qualified applicants throughout the hiring process.
Accessibility & Accommodations
Otter.ai is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities in our hiring process. If you need assistance or an accommodation during any stage of the recruitment process, please contact hr@otter.ai at least 3 business days before your interview.
*Otter.ai does not accept unsolicited resumes from 3rd party recruitment agencies without a written agreement in place for permanent placements. Any resume or other candidate information submitted outside of established candidate submission guidelines (including through our website or via email to any Otter.ai employee) and without a written agreement otherwise will be deemed to be our sole property, and no fee will be paid should we hire the candidate.
Salary range
Salary Range: $136,000 to $164,500 USD per year.
This salary range represents the low and high end of the estimated salary range for this position. The actual base salary offered for the role is dependent on several factors. Our base salary is just one component of a comprehensive total rewards package.
#LI-Hybrid
How we rate this
Software Engineer, Backend (New Grad) at Otter.ai rates 83 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Also common in software engineer jobs at this level
Pay
- This job starts at
- $136k
- Typical software engineer job
- $168k
This posting starts 19% below the typical software engineer job. See software engineer jobs
Questions you could be asked
- How would you design a retrieval step so the model answers from real data instead of guessing?
- What have you built with speech recognition or text-to-speech, and where did it break?
- How would you decide a model or AI system is ready to ship?
- Tell me about a time a model underperformed in production. How did you find out, and what did you change?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: RAG and Speech. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
- Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.
Want an expert to read your CV for this job?
Free. Send your CV and the role you want next. We reply by email within 2 to 4 business days.
Get new software engineer jobs (Builds AI ●●●●) by email
One email a week with the new software engineer jobs (Builds AI ●●●●), each rated for how much AI is in the work. No recruiter spam, unsubscribe in one click.
Free. One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click.
Similar roles
Software Engineering roles that build AI, at other companies.
What kind of AI work fits you?
Answer 12 practical questions in about three minutes. Get a simple profile, the work it points to, and live roles to explore next.
Find my next step