Job Description

DSP/Audio Engineer

Location: Antwerp | On-site presence at our Acoustics Lab

Experience: 8+ years hands-on in audio DSP

Build the future of sound at Loop

At Loop, we're building far more than iconic earwear. We're creating products that help people focus, sleep, recover, connect, and thrive. The algorithms inside them are where acoustic understanding becomes real-world performance.

As our DSP/Audio Engineer, you'll join our Acoustics & DSP team. You'll develop, tune, and validate the algorithms, that extract the best achievable performance from Loop's hardware within real-world constraints.

Here's the thing: audio processing inside earplugs is a niche. Many of the problems you'll face, nobody has solved before. That's exactly why we need you.

The Role

You'll invent, build, and validate audio-processing algorithms end to end: from researching what exists (and what's protected by IP), through prototyping and coding, to tuning on target hardware and proving that what you simulated actually performs on the device.

You won't just execute a roadmap. A product manager may set the direction, but getting there often means solving thirty problems nobody anticipated, and that's where you come in, creating and proposing features that add real value.

DSP at Loop doesn't live in isolation. It's woven together with acoustics, audio, and electronics, so when an acoustician talks decibels or ANC behaviour, you're immediately part of the conversation. Our Antwerp office is where it all comes together: the measurement facilities, the test setups, and the fast, in-person iteration that turns good ideas into validated performance.

What You'll Do

• Design, prototype, and tune audio-processing algorithms using measurement, simulation, and hands-on testing on target hardware
• Improve ANC performance, stability, and robustness across representative operating conditions and hardware variation, including the hard problems, like eliminating whistling and feedback
• Optimize algorithms on device for power, compute, memory, and latency
• Develop and evaluate audio-classification and machine-learning approaches, and implement them where they show measurable value over conventional methods
• Research the state of the art and the IP landscape before building, so we invent where it counts
• Own algorithm development and validation through agreed project milestones, partnering closely with Firmware on production implementation
• Diagnose gaps between simulation, acoustic measurement, and embedded behaviour, and resolve them through controlled experiments and on-device debugging
• Turn project learnings into reusable algorithms, tuning tools, test methods, and documentation, and explore audio topics beyond pure DSP coding

You Won't

• Wait for a fully specified ticket before figuring things out yourself
• Hand off algorithms at the simulation stage and hope they survive contact with hardware
• Reach for machine learning by default when a simpler signal-processing solution wins
• Stay inside one domain rather than bridging acoustics, DSP, electronics, and firmware
• Say "it can't be done" before you've genuinely tried

How You'll Succeed

Audio is more than your job. It's what you'd be reading about anyway. That self-driven curiosity shows in how you work: you take initiative, investigate before escalating, and find your own route to a solution. There are a thousand ways to crack a problem, and you're free to choose yours.

You take algorithms from theory to validated on-device performance, designing experiments that isolate root causes and quantify trade-offs under real operating conditions, not just in simulation.

And you collaborate. You'll have outspoken opinions (good, that's where new ideas come from), but you stay constructive, work through disagreements with evidence, and reach solutions together with the project team.

What You'll Bring

• Deep hands-on experience in DSP algorithm development for audio, typically 8+ years, though depth matters more to us than the exact number
• Strong practical understanding of digital filter design, adaptive signal processing, ANC, electroacoustic signal paths, and acoustic measurement
• Enough acoustics and audio fluency to think along with acousticians, not just alongside them
• Applied knowledge of audio classification and machine learning, including embedded-inference constraints
• A track record of taking algorithms from theory and simulation to working prototypes, hardware tuning, and on-device validation
• Experience with DSP tooling, acoustic measurement, and debugging equipment
• Experience optimizing for embedded constraints: power, compute, memory, and latency
• A relevant technical background in DSP, electronics, electroacoustics, or similar. We care more about what you know than which degree taught you
• The critical thinking and judgment that experience brings: AI can write an algorithm, knowing whether to trust it is on you

Loop isn't for everyone. We might not be a match if you:

• Prefer working fully remote, since our lab, measurement setups, and fastest iteration happen in Antwerp
• Are technically brilliant but struggle to work things out together in a project team
• Need formal authority or a detailed spec to move technical work forward
• See hardware constraints as annoyances rather than the interesting part of the problem
• Prefer well-trodden territory over problems nobody has solved before