Head of Research | Voice

Meet DeepL DeepL is a global communications platform powered by Language AI. Since 2017, we've been on a mission to break down language barriers. Our human-sounding translations and intelligent writing suggestions are designed with enterprise security in mind. Today, they enable over 100,000 businesses to transform communications, reach new markets, and improve productivity. And, empower millions of individuals worldwide to make sense of the world and express their ideas. Our goal is to become the global leader in Language AI, building products that drive better communication, foster connections, and make a real-life impact. To achieve this, we need talented individuals like you to join our exciting journey. If you're ready to work with a dynamic team and build your career in the fast-moving AI space, DeepL is your next destination. What Sets Us Apart What sets us apart is our blend of modern technology, competitive benefits, and an open, welcoming work culture that enables our people to thrive. When we share what it's like to work at DeepL, the reactions are overwhelmingly positive. This may be because of our products that have helped countless people worldwide or our shared mission to improve communication for individuals and businesses, bringing cultures closer together. What we know for sure is this: being part of DeepL means joining a team dedicated to innovation and employee well-being. Discover what our teams have to say about life at DeepL on LinkedIn, Instagram and our Blog. Head of Research, DeepL Voice (Senior Engineering Manager for Research & Applied ML) About The Role We are looking for a senior leader to head the Research organisation for DeepL Voice. This role leads all research efforts across speech, translation, and voice-to-voice systems while managing hybrid teams of researchers, applied scientists, ML engineers, and software engineers. You'll drive the innovation pipeline—from hypothesis and prototyping to production-ready models—working closely with engineering and product partners to bring state-of-the-art voice translation technology into real-world use. This role sits squarely within Research, but requires strong engineering leadership and the ability to manage blended teams and potentially engineering managers. Your Mission You will lead one of DeepL's most strategic research areas—developing the models and core technologies that power our next generation of real-time voice translation. This is an opportunity to build a world-class research organisation with direct product impact, collaborating closely with engineering and design to bring breakthrough experiences to millions. Your teams will explore new model architectures, training techniques, and data strategies, while ensuring research outcomes translate reliably into production systems. You'll build a world-class research organisation with engineering discipline, high ownership, and a culture of fast, iterative delivery. What You'll Do Build and lead the Voice Research organisation, managing researchers, applied ML engineers, and software engineers in a hybrid setup. Own the research strategy across ASR, MT, TTS, voice-to-voice translation, and multimodal modeling. Guide teams through the full lifecycle: early experiments → prototyping → scaling → integration into production pipelines. Set technical direction for model architectures, evaluation, latency optimization, and overall voice pipeline quality. Own the data strategy for research: collection, labeling, curation, augmentation, scraping, cleaning, and dataset governance. Drive training and optimization workflows, including supervised learning, self-supervision, RL/RLAIF/RLHF, alignment, distillation, compression, and efficient inference. Ensure strong collaboration with product engineering, so models are reproducible, deployable, and tuned for real-world usage. Recruit, mentor, and retain top research and engineering talent, building a healthy, high-performing culture. Introduce pragmatic processes that enable speed, clarity, and accountability without slowing down innovation. What We're Looking For Experienced research leader with a history of managing hybrid teams (researchers + engineers) and/or engineering managers. Deep expertise in speech, translation, or multimodal ML—ideally with hands-on exposure to ASR/MT/TTS or real-time ML systems. Strong engineering leadership: comfortable leading software engineers, applied ML engineers, and complex research-engineering interfaces. Proven record of shipping research outcomes into production, not just driving academic research. Experience designing scalable data pipelines (labeling, scraping, cleaning, augmentation, quality assurance). Strong hiring pedigree: ability to attract and grow world-class research and ML engineering talent. Excellent technical judgment and the ability to balance long-term research ambitions with practical product requirements. Structured communicator, able to guide multi-disciplinary teams with clarity and steady direction. What We Offer Diverse and internationally distributed team: joining our team means becoming part of a large, global community with people of more than 90 nationalities. We're more than just colleagues; we're a group of professionals with a shared mission to connect diverse cultures. Our global presence is growing–we've doubled in size nearly every year, with our employees based in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, the US, and Japan, and we continue to expand our network. Open communication, regular feedback: as a language-focused company, we value the importance of clear, honest communication. We value smooth collaboration, direct and actionable feedback, and believe that leading with empathy and growth mindset makes us better together. Hybrid work, flexible hours: we offer a hybrid work schedule, with team members coming into the office three times a week. This allows you to engage directly with your team and experience the unique energy of our workspace, while still enjoying the flexibility and comfort of working from home. With flexible working hours and trust in your productivity, we are in sync with your team's general locations and time zones to foster effective and seamless collaboration. Monthly full-day hacking sessions: every month, we have Hack Fridays, where you can spend your time diving into a project you're passionate about and get the opportunity to work with other teams–we value your initiatives, impact, and creativity. 30 days of annual leave: we value your peace of mind. With 30 days off (excluding public holidays) and access to mental health resources, we make sure you're as strong mentally as you are professionally. Competitive benefits: just as our team spans the globe, so does our benefits package. We've crafted it to reflect the diversity of our team and tailored it to align with your unique location, to ensure you feel supported every step of the way. If this role and our mission resonate with you, but you're hesitant because you don't check all the boxes, don't let that hold you back. At DeepL, it's all about the value you bring and the growth we can foster together. Go ahead, apply—let's discover your potential together. We can't wait to meet you We are an equal opportunity employer You are welcome at DeepL for who you are—we appreciate authenticity here. Our product is for everyone, and so is our workplace. The more voices we have represented and amplified in our business, the more we will all succeed, contribute, and think forward So bring us your personal experience, your perspectives, and your background. It's in our diversity that we will find the power to break down language barriers in the world.