About SkyBuds
SkyBuds makes screen-free AI plush friends for curious kids ages 3 to 10. Ash, Pearl and Sprout each have their own voice and personality: they answer big questions, tell stories that go wherever a child’s imagination takes them, play games and help kids become smarter and more mature.
We believe in an extremely social AI world, where people shift from using AI as a tool to forming real relationships with their AI: in-home robots, on their watch, phone, everywhere.
There are 2B+ children in the world, and we are building the first safe AI entry point for them in a form factor they love: a toy.
The role
You’ll be one of our first engineers and own the backend that powers every conversation. That means the voice AI, the data behind our kid-speech models, and the systems that keep kids safe. We build with AI coding agents, so you’ll also set the structure they build inside. We care about a system that is clean, scalable and fast.
What you’ll do
- Build and scale our realtime voice backend so the toys answer instantly
- Run speech and LLM models in production
- Build the data and evals pipeline that makes our models better every week
- Own the systems that keep kids safe
- Set the patterns that let AI agents and future hires ship fast
You might be a fit if you
- Have shipped and scaled production backends (TypeScript or Python, Postgres)
- Have worked on realtime or AI systems
- Use AI coding agents every day
- Love moving fast and owning things end to end
Bonus: voice AI, connected hardware or kids’ products
Why SkyBuds
- Small team in NYC, and your work ships to families within days
- Real ownership from day one
- $100k to $150k base + founding equity
How to apply
Send your resume and a short note about something you built that you’re proud of.
Founding Engineer in New York at SkyBuds
This position is listed as full time and onsite. It was posted yesterday.