CULTURE
The team at the ‘core’ of Aflorithmic
You may have heard of the term ‘core team’ before, but their role in an organization can vary greatly, depending on the type of organization. At Aflorithmic, the core team are responsible for delivering, or ‘shipping’, all the user-facing features that the other teams build. Let’s take a deep diver into what exactly that looks like.
Angelique
What do they do?
The core team, true to its name, is at the core of the audio technologies that Aflorithmic are building. Not only when it comes to supporting the lower-level audio processing tasks required by other teams, but also in building features that help Aflorithmic’s products achieve their goal of making audio production scalable for our clients.
In short, they build the infrastructure that delivers the end-product to the user, in this case API.audio, and make sure that this covers the entire developer experience. This means providing developers with everything they need such as documentation and libraries in the languages of their choice, so that they can easily pick up our product and start integrating it into their systems.
Another of the principal functions of the core team would be identifying the needs of our users in order to develop new features or services for them. This means researching the best practices required to develop potential new features, and then implementing them. Naturally, this also entails the maintenance of the current and new services that are available internally and externally.
What do they use?
The two SDK (Software Development Kit) libraries they most frequently use are Python and Javascript which they code through VSC (Visual Studio Code). For research projects and experimental coding in particular, they tend to use Python, as well as plenty of machine learning and audio libraries.
When it comes to lower level audio processing, they mainly work in C++ and use the JUCE framework. In terms of programmes, they use CI/CD (continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment) programmes that help deploy things in different ways such as the API.audio.
For data storage they use AWS (Amazon Web Services), and from a product point of view, they use Mixpanel for analytics, Zapier for connections, and Github for code sourcing.
Meet the team
Aflorithmic’s Core Team is made up of five members: Product Owner - Linda, Tech Lead - Sam, API Engineer - Marcin, Audio Researcher - German, and R & D Engineer - Christos.
The Core team building API.audio features in Aflorithmic
Linda - Product Owner
As Product Owner, my main function is transmitting the business needs and requirements to the team to make sure that everyone is always aligned and working towards our goal of building things that are relevant to the customers’ needs.
“What I love most is the dynamics of the job - at a startup no day is the same, and every challenge is one you haven’t had before.
The joy of being a Product Owner is seeing and guiding the whole process from ideation to the physical delivery of the product, and seeing it in customers hands. It is so satisfying to see something that was once just an idea be used and loved by many!”
Sam - Senior Software Engineer / Tech Lead
My main role is owning the mastering engine. I’m currently planning out all the services and how all they connect together, and then delegating who will build each of these features.
Having previously been a University lecturer, all my experience was non-commercial so by joining Aflorithmic I was able to apply my computer science background in a commercial way.
I would love to see API.audio as the go-to AI audio infrastructure in the industry!
Marcin - Software Engineer / API engineer
Maintaining the API and the SDKs is my main role. This includes expanding them, as well as making connections and integrations.
Going forward, I would like to create the next version of our SDKs, and ensure they are the most developer-friendly, high-class products possible.
I am a big fan of serverless architecture, microservices, and the open source community.
German - Audio Researcher
As an audio researcher, for the first six months I will be learning about all the new and existing tools that we use within the core team. After six months, I will be a R & D Engineer (Research and Development Engineer), working primarily on the research part.
This will include everything from smaller projects with clearly-defined goals, up to more exploratory projects, like an exciting AI music project which is soon to be revealed, so watch this space!
Christos - R & D Engineer
My role is to research the state of the art in the automation of music generation, production, and synthesis, and then implement technologies that can benefit the scalability of audio production.
I find the speech problems really interesting to delve into, so hopefully I can explore that further. I hope to discover the intersection between speech machine learning and audio machine learning, and develop something in that area in the future.
Why Aflorithmic?
After speaking with the whole of the core team individually, there was definitely a general consensus of why they loved working with Aflorithmic. In fact, there were two that every single one of them mentioned! These were the Freedom and Autonomy within their role, and the Aflorithmic Team and Culture.
1. Freedom and autonomy
“We have so much autonomy to bring our own ideas to life, so there is always a lot of room for your own initiative and growth!”
“There is also a lot of freedom and trust within my projects, so as long as I plan the ideas I propose carefully, I can implement them, and work on those projects.”
“I like that I have autonomy to tackle the problems the way I like, and that I can suggest not just things to build, but also the processes behind them.”
2. Team & culture
“My favorite thing is the people that I get to work with everyday and that everyone is super motivated so things always move fast!”
“I love the Aflorithmic’s trust-based culture, because there is no micro-management.”
“All the teams are amazing! So the company culture in general is a great plus.”
International Geek Day
For those of you who didn’t know, Wednesday 25th May is International Geek Day! This celebration of geek-culture began in 2006 in Spain as ‘Día del orgullo friki’ thanks to the Spanish blogger Germán Martínez, known online as señor Buebo, and has since spread around the world.
In honor of this special day, we felt that as a tech company made up of self-confessed geeks, it was only natural that we celebrate it by sharing some of Aflorithmic’s most awesome geeky accomplishments which you can check out on our social media!
Work with Aflorithmic
At Aflorithmic, we are constantly growing and looking out for fresh talent, so we always have interesting opportunities for you to work with us which you can check out below!
Or, if you are interested in introducing beautiful, scalable audio into your digital content for business or projects, you can contact us here.
About:
Aflorithmic is a London/Barcelona-based technology company. Its API.audio platform enables fully automated, scalable audio production by using synthetic media, voice cloning, and audio mastering, to then deliver it on any device, such as websites, mobile apps, or smart speakers.
With this Audio-As-A-Service, anybody can create beautiful sounding audio, starting from a simple text to including music and complex audio engineering without any previous experience required.
The team consists of highly skilled specialists in machine learning, software development, voice synthesizing, AI research, audio engineering, and product development.