Senior Applied Research Engineer - Media Quality

What You'll Do

• Own research-to-production work across audio/video signal processing, perceptual quality, and media intelligence.

• Partner with teams to integrate prototypes into production systems and decision-making across areas like music and video information retrieval and quality-aware processing.

• Work across the full media pipeline, from encoding and delivery to playback, buffering, and synchronization.

• Build evaluation frameworks and support media platform and codec decisions grounded in measurement.

• Design perceptual studies, develop tooling that connects quality metrics to real user experience outcomes.

• Collaborate with multi-functional teams, turning research insights into scalable capabilities used across Spotify.

• Help improve how we evaluate and enhance media quality across the platform.

• Drive high-impact initiatives from idea through to measurable outcomes.

Who You Are

• You have 8+ years of experience in applied research and engineering in media technology, audio, or video.

• You bring deep expertise in audio and/or video, with working knowledge across both domains.

• You understand media systems end-to-end, from backend processing through to client-side playback.

• You have strong foundations in signal processing and experience with perceptual quality or feature design.

• You are comfortable working in Python and have experience with C++ or similar languages.

• You have experience running perceptual evaluations or quality benchmarking.

• You enjoy building systems that move from research into real-world impact.

• You collaborate effectively across disciplines and communicate complex ideas clearly.

• You are curious, pragmatic, and motivated by solving meaningful problems.

Where You'll Be

• This role is based in London or Stockholm.
• We offer you the  flexibility to work where you work best! There will be some in person meetings, but still allows for flexibility to work from home.