Why work at The Echo Nest?
We are changing the world of music through serious technology.
We’ve been called “the most important music company on earth” and we make “Pandora look like a transistor radio”. Everyone at The Echo Nest is so passionate about the near term future of music we’re working to build that we simply wouldn’t work anywhere else. Thousands of independent developers use our stuff every day to build the next generation of music experiences. And we work with the biggest names in the business (MOG, Thumbplay, Rdio, Spotify, Universal Music, Warner, MTV, BBC, and so many more) who are as big believers in The Echo Nest as we are.
We make really cool stuff and we do it fast and with no overhead.
We’ve built the biggest database about music in the world -- 34 million songs, almost 2.4 million artists, with detailed information on each down to the pitch of every note in a guitar solo. And we’ve done it with off-the-shelf mostly open source technologies such as Solr, Tokyo Tyrant, RabbitMQ and Python combined with the brainpower of a few dissertations, algorithms and hard work over the past few years. No one is slowed down by process or politics. We follow the world of music carefully and release our latest innovations the second they’re ready. Everyone here is self-driven and learns what they need to in order to make awesome stuff. You can see some of our public work on Github.
We are excellent hosts.
Ever been to a Music Hack Day? 200 people just like you packed in a room for a weekend building the future of music. Not only have we co-organized and sponsored almost every single one and sent our employees regularly to places like Berlin, London and Barcelona, working in our office in the heart of Davis Square, Somerville, MA is pretty much like being at a hack day, every day.
We have contractual obligations to never move out to the suburbs, and most employees walk or bike to work. Free catered lunch on Fridays are always a hit and no one ever says that the espresso isn’t good enough. We've got more than our fair share of cocktail aficionados too. If we had a motto, it would be something like “be nice, work hard and get excited.”
The Echo Nest offers an excellent benefits and vacation package. Please mail us at jobs@echonest.com. If you fit a position, someone from EN will get back to you as soon as possible. We're sorry, but the volume of applications makes it impossible for us to reply to every application.
Engineering Positions
- Principal QA Engineer
- Music Information Retrieval Scientist
- Customer Solutions Engineer
- Web Developer / Customer Solutions Engineer
- Engineer
- Fall 2013 Junior Engineering Intern
- Fall - Student Internship - Audio / Music Analysis
Business Positions
- Inside Sales Associate/Business Development Manager
- Fall - Student Internship - Editorial/Research
- Fall - Student Internship - QA/Marketing
Engineering Positions
Principal QA Engineer
The Echo Nest is the world’s leading music intelligence platform serving music data to 100 million music consumers a month via an API that supports hundreds of queries a second to mobile devices, websites and applications. We are looking for an experienced Principal QA Engineer to work on the Echo Nest musical platform, which is powering hundreds of music discovery, playlisting and radio applications around the globe. The ideal candidate should be experienced with establishing automation frameworks, be proficient in automated testing and defining test strategies and plans, and competent in test case development and execution and communicating test status. He or she will also share a passion for music and familiarity with large-scale information retrieval and web services.
Responsibilities
- Establish, manage, and improve automated testing and QA tools for web crawling, web services APIs and analysis tasks.
- In collaboration with Development, extend and improve regression tests for use in continuous deployment scenarios.
- Define and implement test environments for efficient test execution.
- Collaborate with developers and other QA engineers to design, create and execute comprehensive tests.
- Tracking test progress and reporting on status.
Ideal Candidate
- 8+ years experience in QA engineering.
- Experience establishing and managing creative processes for data-intensive QA tasks, ideally in an information retrieval / web services environment.
- Experienced in development in Linux, ideally with Python.
- Relentlessly well-organized and tenacious about data quality.
- BA/BS in Computer Science or related degree.
- Passionate about music and well-versed in online music services.
Location: This is a full time position in our office in Davis Square, Somerville MA USA
Send resume and cover letter to jobs@echonest.com.
Music Information Retrieval Scientist
We are looking for an audio and music scientist to improve our music analysis, and search algorithms. You'll be in charge of evaluating and improving the current audio algorithms for feature extraction (key, time signature, beats, etc.), and acoustic similarity ranking of millions of tracks. The ideal candidate has a strong experience with audio analysis, data modeling, and machine learning techniques (clustering, classification, regression, etc).
Responsibilities
- Design efficient music analysis and modeling algorithms
- Evaluate and improve current music feature extraction
- Quick prototyping in Python and C++
Ideal Candidate
- Strong background in machine learning and statistics
- Strong background in audio analysis and music data modeling
- Proficient in C/C++ and Python (or Matlab)
- Educational background in computer science, signal processing, and music
- Some experience in text-based retrieval and processing
Location: Davis Square, Somerville, MA
Send resume and cover letter to jobs@echonest.com.
Customer Solutions Engineer
The Echo Nest is the world’s leading music intelligence platform serving music data to 100 million music consumers a month via an API that supports hundreds of queries a second to mobile devices, websites and applications. We are looking for a customer facing solutions engineer who will help develop solutions to support our growing customer base.
The perfect candidate is passionate about music and data, is a solid and responsible front and back end developer, and can learn new things quickly. We use the latest technologies to support our stack: Tornado, Solr, RabbitMQ, Python, Lua, git, Amazon EC2, Hadoop. You’ll be handed a MacBook Pro and SSH keys and we’ll want you to be up and running in a day or two. We’ll expect that you’ve used our API before you submit a resume.
Responsibilities
- Helping prospects and customers solve technical issues with our web services and API.
- Answering questions from prospects and customers about the features and capabilities of our API product and services.
- Work with Product and Engineering teams to develop customer-facing reports, statistics and deliverables on an as-needed basis.
- Communicating customer needs and wishes to Product and Engineering teams.
- Write code (Python, Java, HTML, CSS, etc.) to process data from the world’s largest database about music.
- Self-motivated task planning and deadline management.
Ideal Candidate
- Excellent understanding of the technical fundamentals of the Internet.
- Solid knowledge of internet protocols, scripting languages, database manipulation and reporting tools.
- Strong command line Linux skills. You should have set up and run your own Linux servers before.
- The ability to transform complex data sets into easily readable and customer consumable reports.
- Excellent writing skills. Most of your work will be written (email, documentation, etc.).
- 3+ years previous experience in a customer facing technical support role.
- Demonstrable knowledge of web application development (please bring examples of your previous work).
- Strong familiarity with online music services and social networks.
- Self driven to a fault, learn on your own.
Location: San Francisco, CA
Send resume and cover letter to jobs@echonest.com.
Web Developer / Customer Solutions Engineer
The Echo Nest is the world’s leading music intelligence platform serving music data to 100 million music consumers a month via an API that supports hundreds of queries a second to mobile devices, websites and applications. We are looking for a customer facing solutions engineer who will help act as a primary point of contact for developing solutions to support our growing customer base.
The perfect candidate is passionate about music and data, is a solid and responsible front and back end developer, and can learn new things quickly. We use the latest technologies to support our stack: Tornado, Solr, RabbitMQ, MySQL, Python, git and Amazon EC2. You’ll be handed a MacBook Pro and SSH keys and we’ll want you to be up and running in a day or two. We’ll expect that you’ve used our API before you submit a resume.
Responsibilities
- Helping prospects and customers solve technical issues with our web services and API
- Answering questions from prospects and customers about the features and capabilities of our API product and services
- Triage customer support issues to Product and Engineering teams
- Support and extend complex JavaScript web applications
- Understand and support enterprise customers in their usage of our API and tools
- Self-motivated task planning and deadline management
- Work is done primarily in office, but will have customer facing responsibilities.
Ideal Candidate
- 3-5+ years previous experience in customer-facing and technical roles
- Strong knowledge in and experience with a dynamic programming language, such as JavaScript or Python
- Solid computer programming fundamentals, demonstrated by either a degree or advanced work in the field.
- Deeply familiar with front end development, or in possession of a strong interest, desire, and ability to learn.
- Comfortable with a shell prompt.
- Thoroughly comfortable talking to customers
- Excellent writing skills. A good portion of your work will be written (email, documentation, etc.)
- Strong familiarity with online music services and social
Location: Somerville, MA - Davis Square
Send resume and cover letter to jobs@echonest.com.
Engineer
The Echo Nest is the world’s leading music intelligence platform serving music data to 100 million music consumers a month via an API that supports hundreds of queries a second to mobile devices, websites and applications. We are looking for an engineer to help our team build the best music intelligence products and grow our database of detailed data about 30 million songs and almost 1.5 million artists.
The perfect candidate is passionate about music and data, is a solid and responsible developer, and can learn new things quickly. We use the latest technologies to support our stack: Tornado, Solr, RabbitMQ, Tokyo Tyrant, Python, Lua, svn and git, Amazon EC2, Hadoop. You’ll be handed a Macbook Pro and SSH keys and we’ll want you to be up and running in a day or two, committing production code. We’ll expect that you’ve used our API before you submit a resume.
Responsibilities
- Write code (Python, Java, etc) to process and support the world’s largest database about music.
- Work on a small team focused on data mining, web crawling or databases and APIs.
- Self-motivated task planning and deadline management.
- Maintain and constantly improve the quality of The Echo Nest API data and web services.
Ideal Candidate
- 1-3 years experience of development work
- Linux administration experience - - shell scripting, cron, ssh, basic commandline interaction
- BA/BS in Computer Science or related
- Demonstrable knowledge of web application development
- A strong familiarity with online music services and social networks
- Self driven to a fault, learns on their own
- Reads Hacker News but does not believe any of it without testing it first
Location: Davis Square, Somerville, MA
Send resume and cover letter to jobs@echonest.com.
Fall 2013 Junior Engineering Intern
This is for a Fall 2013 internship. We have no available internships for the Summer 2013.
The Echo Nest is looking for undergraduate or graduate computer science students who love music to help build on our one-of- a-kind music intelligence platform. The perfect candidate is more than passionate about music, is a solid developer, and can learn new things quickly. The internship is located in our office in Davis Square, Somerville MA, USA.
Responsibilities
- Support development efforts around a code base that processes large amounts of music-oriented text and audio data
- Support of automated testing, scripting and basic QA for web crawling and audio analysis
- Learn new technologies quickly
Ideal Candidate
- Familiar with development and scripting work
- Demonstrated top academic achievement in college-level CS or related coursework
- Demonstrable knowledge of web application development
- Passionate online music fan who loves learning new technologies
Location: Davis Square, Somerville, MA
Send resume and cover letter to jobs@echonest.com.
Fall - Student Internship - Audio / Music Analysis
The Echo Nest is looking for undergraduate or graduate student musicians and audio engineers to help build our one-of-a-kind music intelligence platform by providing musical analysis and QA surrounding audio features. The perfect candidate understands music theory and structures (key signatures, arrangements, verse and chorus), can identify key, mode, tempo, and time signature of a piece of music (perfect pitch is not required), is looking to fill a co-op or internship requirement for school and can learn new things quickly. The internship is located in our office in Davis Square. This internship is unpaid and is available for students looking for academic credit.
Responsibilities
- Listen to music and identify objective features such as key, tempo, mode, time signature.
- Listen to music and provide subjective input or rankings based on attributes such as energy and danceability.
- Able to understand and verbally convey your work process to help our developers.
- Learn new technologies quickly.
Ideal Candidate
- Comfortable with Apple computers and iWork.
- Has a strong knowledge of music theory and structures.
- Able to listen objectively to music and provide unbiased input.
- Motivated problem solver.
- Passionate music fan who loves learning about new technologies.
Location: Davis Square, Somerville, MA
Send resume and cover letter to jobs@echonest.com.
Business Positions
Inside Sales Associate/Business Development Manager
The Echo Nest is looking for Business Development Managers (BDMs) responsible for generating leads, answering inbound inquiries and closing business for the world’s fastest growing music technology platform. This position will primarily focus on music-related companies and application developers looking to create world-class music experiences and applications. This position is an entry-level position with The Echo Nest business team and has a clear path to increased responsibilities (and role) for the motivated individual.
Responsibilities
- Identification and matching The Echo Nest solutions to key markets products and companies
- Lead qualification and prioritization
- Converting inbound interest in The Echo Nest solutions to sales
- Sales coordination of an assigned territory.
Ideal Candidate
- At least 2 years of relevant work experience
- Well-organized with excellent communication and presentation skills.
- Achievement Oriented; past quantifiable sales and/or marketing experience sales exceeding quota in fast-paced technology/media oriented sales position (or the potential to do so)
- Technically proficient with a solid understanding of the music search, personalization and interactive music application landscape.
- Passionate online music fan with a casual vibe and a serious work ethic.
- 4 Year Competitive College Degree
Location: Somerville, MA (Davis Square) & San Francisco, CA
Send resume and cover letter to jobs@echonest.com.
Fall - Student Internship - Editorial/Research
This internship at The Echo Nest will entail finding, appraising, reviewing, and entering data about music-oriented applications on a multitude of platforms: smartphones, tablets, web browsers, and computers, with an emphasis on mobile and web apps that strengthen the connection between listeners and music. This internship is unpaid and is available for students looking for academic credit.
Responsibilities
- Must know and care about music.
- Must know and care about technology.
- Relatively peaceful disposition.
- Does not require micromanagement.
- Attention to detail.
- Doesn't mind a mix of web research, data entry and writing.
- Must have an attention span of at least 5x that of average Jersey Shore cast member.
- Must be familiar with smartphones, mobile apps, web apps, desktop software -- especially as they relate to music listening, interaction, creation, etc.
- HTML, blogging, and/or database experience is a plus.
- Preferably, this would be an English major or minor with writing samples. The writing samples could be about anything, although something to do with music and/or technology would be a plus.
Ideal Candidate
- The ideal candidate would want to be a music enthusiast who might want to be a professional tech journalist or blogger eventually, but lacks the experience and is trying to acquire it.
Location: Davis Square, Somerville, MA
Send resume and cover letter to jobs@echonest.com.
Fall - Student Internship - QA/Marketing
The Echo Nest is looking for undergraduate or graduate students who love music to help build on our one-of- a-kind music intelligence platform by providing strong QA. The perfect candidate is more than passionate about music, looking to fill a co-op or internship requirement for school, proficient with Macs, and can learn new things quickly. The internship is located in our office in Davis Square. This internship is unpaid and is available for students looking for academic credit.
Responsibilities
- Quickly search through information for a variety of tasks focusing on online music.
- Able to understand and verbally convey your work process to help our developers.
- Learn new technologies quickly.
Ideal Candidate
- Comfortable with Macintosh computers and iWork.
- Has a strong knowledge of blogs and social networking.
- Able to quickly sort through content for important details.
- Motivated problem solver.
- Passionate music fan who loves learning about new technologies.
Location: Davis Square, Somerville, MA
Send resume and cover letter to jobs@echonest.com.