Machine Learning Engineer

We're Happy Scribe, a 100% bootstrapped and profitable startup based in Barcelona.

We offer transcription and subtitling services by combining AI with the expertise of language professionals to create a 5-star product. We're working on one of the fundamental problems of this decade: speech-to-text technology.

We're just 15 people at the moment, but growing fast and profitable (€4M ARR, 110% YoY growth) and we're building the team thoughtfully and with a lot of care.

Want to know what it’s like to work here? Read our team endorsements on Otta jobs.

Build the most accurate Speech-To-Text. Forget about optimising Ads networks, recommending stuff, predicting customer behaviour and things like that. We're talking about converting Speech to Text and many related problems like Speaker Identification or Audio and Text Alignment.

Use our huge and growing dataset of transcriptions built by our amazing team of professional transcribers. We have one of the biggest datasets in the field.

Build all this almost from scratch and plug it to our platform that transcribes tens of thousands of audios every month.

You're a hacker. Your sharp view of what's the bottom line allows you to duck-tape systems at a speed that wouldn't seem possible.

You work close to the metal. Deep Learning is an engineering problem as much as a research problem. You make things fast and know UNIX well.

You're unfazed by the "boring work" because you understand the ultimate goal is maximising impact.

You care about the business implications of anything you build. You don't go after the shiny stuff, but see it as a balance of craft, speed, and the bottom line.

You can learn most technologies as you go. You're pragmatic about them, it's about the tools and tradeoffs, not ideologies.

You love steep learning curves, and are not afraid to learn about subjects that are outside of the comfort zone.

You get things done. There are lots of people who are really excited about tons of things. Only some of those are excited about completing things.

You care a great deal about your work. When something is off it's almost offensive to you.

Bonus: You're excited by someone buying gaming GPUs, which are 10x cheaper than datacenter GPUs, and building an in-house rack that enables large-scale training for a frugal startup.

Have an impact on millions of people — Change how users and language professionals make transcriptions, translations and subtitles.

Work with a small team of bright people — When we talk with most people, they have a hard time understanding how we got so far with so few people. Looking at this, we're close in ARR to a typical Series B company, but our ARR per employee is 10x the industry average.

A company culture built on trust, autonomy, and independence

Infinite runway, no hypergrowth nonsense. We are 100% bootstrapped and profitable. Every penny spent comes from happy customers who are paying for a product they value. We don’t spend money we don’t have and we are passionate about scaling sustainably.

Competitive salary — our salaries in the top percentiles of the Barcelona startup scene.

Equity — By joining the company when the team is so small, you’re helping us set the foundations of our future success. We're asking you to come on an adventure, so if we find a treasure, we want you to get a piece.

Mental health support — We have partnered with Oliva to offer you the best mental health support, from day 1. You can access 1-1 online therapy as often as you need to and it’s 100% confidential.

Flexible working hours — Work on the schedule that makes you the most happy and productive. Here's more info.

Flexible vacation time — So you can recharge your batteries whenever you need to, without having to count the days.

€1,000 per year travel bonus — We live in a distributed world where most people have friends and family spread around the globe. We don’t want finances or distances to get in the way of spending time with the people you care about. This perk will help you stay closer to them.

We make it work — Have kids? Live far away? Do you have a non-normative life setup? The thing we care the most about is the team. Once we know we want to work with you, we make it work.

In-Person culture — We believe nothing beats the magic of great people working together in person, in and outside of working hours. Expect meaningful, laughter-filled conversations over shared meals, cocktail nights, team-building activities like customised murder mysteries, and more!

Beautiful office in Gràcia — One of the best areas in Barcelona. Our offices are much more than just a place to work. We like to see them alive 24/7, filled with friends and creative activities. Want to organise a community event, a breakfast with other designers, developers, etc.? The place is yours. Take a sneak peak here.

Visa sponsorship and Relocation help — We want to work with the best people, regardless of where they're from. We'll help with your relocation costs and getting set up in Barcelona and will sponsor your visa if needed.

Team Retreats — So far we've been to Paris, Mallorca, the Pyrenees, Aran Islands, Dublin, and Sweden, where we had a small island to ourselves!

The hardware that you need to be most productive.

1 book/mo + e-learning platforms, conferences or courses of your choice — We truly want you to learn.

International, English-only speaking environment — We're building an international team and want to create an inclusive environment where anyone can join any conversation at any time, even if it’s just kitchen talk. That's why you'll find Italian, French or Catalan people talking in English to each other.

Your CV

Some links that best showcase the relevant things you've built and done; portfolio, LinkedIn, Github, websites, photos...

Answer the question — What was your steepest learning curve?