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)

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

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

   3. 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")

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

5. 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.