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Greater London, England, United Kingdom
Onsite
Music is Universal
It’s the passionate and dedicated team at Universal Music who help make us the world’s leading music company. From A&R to finance, legal to digital, sales to marketing, Universal Music is the place to grow and develop your career within a truly commercial and innovative business that leads in everything it does.
Everyone is welcome to apply for our roles, and we are determined to ensure that no applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment because of gender, race, disability, sexual orientation, religion, belief, age, marital status, background, pregnancy, or caring responsibilities. We also recognise the importance of diversity of thought within our teams and are fully committed to embracing the talents of people with autism, dyslexia, ADHD, and other forms of neurocognitive variation.
We will always seek to make appropriate adjustments to recruitment, workplaces, and work processes to be fully inclusive to people with different needs and working styles. If you need us to make any reasonable adjustments for you from application onwards, including alternatives to the online form or to disclose a neurocognitive condition, please email UniversalMusicCareers@umusic.com.
Role overview
UMG are looking for an Audio Engineer to join our Content and Signal Processing R&D team. This is a rare opportunity to work at the intersection of creative audio engineering and advanced technology development, delivering high-quality commercial releases while helping shape the next generation of audio tools.
The majority of the role is hands-on post-production engineering, using emerging technologies and modern workflows to prepare, edit, deliver and evaluate releases in both stereo and immersive formats. These workflows are often complex and demand a high level of technical precision, critical listening ability, and creative judgment to achieve excellent results.
Alongside production work, you will contribute to R&D initiatives across the full product lifecycle: from early-stage research and experimentation through to real-world deployment with other engineers and producers. This includes evaluating audio machine learning models, creating and curating datasets, developing processing pipelines, stress-testing new tools and feeding practical insight back into product development.
The ideal candidate will have deep technical expertise and strong creative instinct, able to switch between both lanes with ease. The role is based at our London office (4PS) with regular access to an on-site world-class ATC 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos mix studio.
Job Functions
Apply advanced audio engineering techniques to deliver high-quality outputs for commercial releases
Conduct and evaluate test mixes in stereo and immersive formats to evaluate new tools, workflows and processing approaches
Assess AI and signal processing model outputs through structured critical listening and technical analysis
Design and run listening tests, both formal (e.g. MUSHRA) and informal
Create and curate high-quality audio datasets to support model training, validation, and benchmarking
Collaborate closely with internal audio engineering teams to gather feedback and support product deployment
Clearly communicate technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences
Contribute to iterative product development through structured experimentation, documentation and feedback
Develop, implement and maintain audio processing pipelines and automation workflows, including Python-based tools where appropriate
Skills and Experience
Essential
Minimum three years’ professional experience in audio engineering
Deep understanding of music production, recording, mixing and mastering processes, as well as associated workflows and technologies
Strong technical foundation in digital audio, signal processing, psychoacoustics, and spatial audio principles
Practical experience working with immersive audio formats, including Dolby Atmos
Excellent proficiency in modern DAWs, particularly Pro Tools
Excellent critical listening skills, with the ability to articulate perceptual differences and quality assessments clearly
Experience working with cutting-edge audio tools, including source separation, adaptive processing, and modern reverb/emulation technologies
Desired
Degree in audio engineering or a related field
Experience with audio programming in Python or C++
Demonstrable track record of engineering on commercially released music across a range of genres
Person specification
Creative problem solver with an ability to innovate and adapt to new challenges
Passionate about music creation and motivated by pushing the boundaries of sound production
Musical background, with good understanding of music theory and practice
Excellent attention to detail
Comfortable moving between research-driven technical environments and creative studio settings
Curious, self-motivated and proactive
Just So You Know…
The company presents this job description as a guide to the major areas and duties for which the jobholder is accountable. However, the business operates in an environment that demands change and the jobholder's specific responsibilities and activities will vary and develop. Therefore, the job description should be seen as indicative and not as a permanent, definitive, and exhaustive statement.