Research Scientist - Speech Synthesis

Nuance Labs • Seattle, WA

6d • Onsite

About The Position

Nuance Labs is an early-stage deep tech startup. We’re building the first real-time human foundation model — unifying text, speech, and vision — to make AI socially and emotionally intelligent. Imagine an AI that can understand a quirked eyebrow, a shift in tone, or a hesitant pause, and respond in a way that feels truly human.
The first human foundation model that operates across text, speech, facial expression, and body language in real time. This unified model:
Understands fine-grained human signals — from a quirked eyebrow to a subtle change in voice — and infers meaning in context
Generates lifelike, responsive avatars whose expressions, gestures, and tone evolve frame-by-frame to deliver genuine responses
The landscape is ripe for innovation. While voice AI systems have made great strides in capturing prosody, and avatar platforms can generate compelling visuals, existing solutions remain fragmented. Real-time, multimodal interaction — where voice, facial expression, and contextual perception converge — is still an unsolved problem. This role offers the rare opportunity to shape foundational technology in a space where the boundaries are still being defined.
We’re research scientists who’ve spent years advancing AI avatar and audio-visual generation — publishing at top conferences and shipping ultra-low-latency ML products to millions. We combine frontier research with the ruthless engineering needed for consumer-grade, real-time systems.
Nuance Labs Key Facts
$10M seed round backed by Accel, South Park Commons, Lightspeed, and top angels including Synthesia’s former CPO.
A world-class team of PhDs from MIT, UW, and Oxford with decades of industry experience at Apple and Meta, advancing real-time avatars from cutting-edge research to products used by millions.
In-person collaboration, 5 days a week at Seattle HQ

Requirements

• Have a PhD (or equivalent experience) in training speech synthesis models (text-to-speech, speech-to-speech, etc.), training audio generation models, or related fields, with a track record of pushing the research frontier
• Know deep learning inside out and can run the whole ML pipeline, from data wrangling and rapid prototyping to large-scale training, benchmarking, and evaluation
• Love blank-page problems, chart your own course, and make progress without waiting for someone to hand you a task list
• Move quickly from research breakthroughs to practical, real-world applications
• Write code that’s clean enough your future self will thank you for
• Play well with other brilliant minds from different domains

Responsibilities

• Building the first human foundation model that operates across text, speech, facial expression, and body language in real time.
• Unified model understands fine-grained human signals and infers meaning in context
• Generates lifelike, responsive avatars whose expressions, gestures, and tone evolve frame-by-frame to deliver genuine responses

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree