Python Backend Engineer

About Synhawk

Synhawk builds next-generation AI voice security for telco operators. Our platform detects deepfake voice and synthetic media in real time, running directly inside on-prem telco networks where latency, reliability, and security are non-negotiable.

We’re past the research phase and actively deploying with our first major telco customers. This is real infrastructure: on-prem GPU clusters, air-gapped environments, strict SLAs, and systems that must work flawlessly from day one.

We’re a small, highly technical, founder-led team. Joining now means shaping core systems, architecture, and engineering standards at a critical moment in the company’s growth.

Role Overview

We’re hiring a Python Backend Engineer to help build and evolve the backend layer powering Synhawk’s AI platform. You’ll design and scale the services that expose our ML models to production - turning cutting-edge research into reliable, low-latency systems used by telco operators at scale.

This role sits at the intersection of backend engineering, ML inference, and infrastructure. You’ll work closely with ML engineers, infra, and product, learning alongside senior engineers while taking meaningful ownership of components from day one.

What You’ll Do

Backend & Platform Architecture

• Build and maintain Python-based backend services powering AI inference

• Implement clean, versioned gRPC APIs for inference, scoring, metadata, and monitoring

• Contribute to scalable, modular pipelines for audio ingestion, preprocessing, inference, and post-processing

• Help shape API design, documentation, and backend architecture

AI Inference & Performance

• Work with GPU-accelerated inference (PyTorch, ONNX Runtime, Triton, or similar)

• Optimize for real-world workloads: batching, async processing, caching, multiprocessing

• Handle streaming and batch audio inputs (SIPREC / SRTP / files)

• Work hands-on with performance profiling, latency tuning, and throughput optimization

On-Prem & Production Deployments

• Contribute to containerized deployments (Docker) for on-prem and restricted environments

• Help deploy into highly secured, air-gapped telco networks with custom constraints

• Work with Kubernetes or bare-metal orchestration, depending on client infrastructure

• Help build CI/CD pipelines for offline deployments and controlled upgrades

Reliability, Observability & Quality

• Implement metrics for latency, GPU utilization, confidence scores, and system health

• Build logging, tracing, and observability suitable for regulated telco operations

• Contribute to testing strategy across APIs and pipeline components

• Help raise the bar on reliability, security, and operational excellence

What We’re Looking For

Must-have

• 3+ years of experience in Python backend engineering

• Experience building production APIs, exposure to distributed systems.

• Working experience with FastAPI, Flask or similar.

• Solid understanding of async systems, queues, multiprocessing, and concurrency

• Hands-on experience with Docker and real-world deployment workflows

• Willingness to learn the constraints of on-prem and regulated environments

• Awareness of performance and observability concerns; eagerness to deepen these skills.

Nice-to-have

• Experience with real-time audio processing or telecom systems (VoIP, SIP, RTP/SRTP, SIPREC)

• Kubernetes (or OpenShift) experience in restricted networks

• Cloud platform experience (Gcp, AWS, Azure…)

• Model optimization (quantization, TensorRT, inference schedulers)

• CI/CD for offline or regulated environments

• Background in cybersecurity, telco infrastructure, or critical systems

• Familiarity with NIS2 / GDPR environments

• Experience shipping ML models (PyTorch / ONNX) into production

What We Offer

• An important role shaping a mission-critical AI security platform

• Work on real deepfake detection deployed in production telco networks

• Strong influence over tooling and the whole engineering culture

• Access to high-performance GPU infrastructure (including H100 clusters)

• Competitive compensation

• Beautiful offices in the heart of Prague

• A focused, founder-led team with minimal process and maximum impact