Audio Consultant Engineer - Linux Audio Stack (Remote/Anywhere)

What You'll Actually Do

• • Upstream & Community Participation: Contribute to and collaborate with WirePlumber, PipeWire, and ALSA upstream communities

  • Real-World Impact: Design, integrate, and ship embedded Linux audio systems that work reliably in real-world products

  • Deep Technical Work: Implement and debug PipeWire + WirePlumber stacks, including ALSA, DSPs, and system-level interactions

  • Customer Collaboration: Work directly with customer teams to translate requirements into robust audio architectures and solutions

  • Breadth When Needed: Support adjacent areas like Bluetooth audio and Linux audio tooling when required (pw-cli, pw-top, alsa-utils, tracing frameworks) to diagnose and resolve issues efficiently

  • Be a Technical Advisor: Explain complex audio architecture decisions to product teams, provide honest assessments of what is and isn't possible and build trust through transparent communication

What We're Looking For

• Required:

• Strong hands-on experience with the Linux audio stack (PipeWire, WirePlumber, ALSA)

• Strong proficiency in C and systems-level programming

• Solid understanding of core audio concepts (latency, formats, synchronization, buffering, resampling)

• Proven ability to debug complex issues across multiple layers of a Linux system

• Comfortable working directly with customers in a consulting or support capacity

• Strong communication skills, both written and verbal

• Nice to Have:

• Experience with ALSA kernel driver development

• Familiarity with Rust

• Exposure to Bluetooth audio (A2DP, HFP, LE Audio)

• Basic understanding of DSP concepts, such as signal flow, filtering, and common processing blocks (e.g. echo cancellation, noise suppression, beamforming)

• Contributions to relevant open-source projects

• Experience with embedded or real-time Linux systems

What We Offer

• Compensation & Benefits

• We offer a competitive benefits package tailored to each country in which we have employees, plus a core global benefit offering accessible to all Collaborans. Our core benefits include:

• Competitive salary based on experience and location

• Office setup budget

• Sabbatical/Retention of Services - after five years of continuous service

• Co-working policy - support for working outside home

• Wellness assessments - biannual wellbeing assessments with a trained mental health specialist

• Conference attendance - we cover expenses and encourage speaking opportunities

• Open source time - contribute to projects you care about

Work Environment

• • Fully remote - work where you’re most productive

  • Global team - engineers across Europe, Americas and Asia

  • No on-call rotations - this isn't support work

  • Sustainable pace - we're here for the long term

  • Flexible hours - manage your own schedule

Growth & Impact

• • Upstream contributions - your work shapes Linux, not just client products

  • Technical leadership track - path to principal engineer, subsystem expertise or technical architecture roles

  • Consulting track - develop deeper client relationships, lead customer engagements or shape service offerings

  • Mentorship opportunities - both receiving and providing guidance

  • Conference speaking - we support presentation submissions and provide coaching

  • Recognition - your contributions are public, building your professional reputation

Culture & Values

• • Upstream first - we believe the best solutions benefit everyone

  • Transparency - open discussion about technical decisions, business constraints and project challenges

  • Pragmatism - perfect is the enemy of good; we ship quality code that solves real problems

  • Respect for expertise - we trust engineers to make technical decisions

  • Collaborative - we succeed by working together, internally and with the community

  • Sustainable pace - we're here for the marathon, not the sprint

Our Interview Process

• We respect your time and provide a clear, structured process:

• 1. Application Review (within 2 weeks) - we look at your code and contributions

  2. Initial Chat (30 min) - casual conversation about your experience and our work

  3. Technical Interview (2 - 3h)

  4. 2. Technical Deep-Dive - discuss kernel architecture, past debugging challenges and how you approach problem-solving (no whiteboard coding)

     3. Code Review Session - review real patches together, discuss trade-offs

     4. Client Scenario Discussion - talk through a realistic customer situation: balancing technical debt, timeline pressure and upstream goals (we want to see your thought process, not a "right answer")

  5. Chief Operating Officer  (60 min) - meet the Chief Operating Officer, ask about day-to-day work and how Collabora works, discuss compensation and benefits.

  6. Offer (within 1 week of final interview)

• Total timeline: 3-4 weeks from application to offer

• We provide feedback at every stage, and you'll always know where you stand.

Collabora's Commitment

• We're committed to building a diverse team and inclusive environment. We encourage applications from people underrepresented in tech.

• We evaluate candidates based on skills and contributions, not pedigree. If you're unsure whether you qualify, apply anyway - imposter syndrome is real and you might be exactly who we're looking for.