[Hiring] Lead Engineer - AI Voice @hireVouch

Role Description

Our client is a mission-driven, seed-stage startup modernizing emergency response communications, reducing 911 call wait times and improving public safety outcomes. It’s a Canadian corporation that operates with remote teams distributed across North America. Their core product is an AI-powered voice agent that autonomously handles incoming calls for government services, with an acute focus on public-safety and city-service hotlines.

The platform utilizes commercially available and open-source models to provide a sophisticated voice agent capable of triaging 911 calls, automating routine and non-emergent 911 calls, and handling 311 and government service calls. The company differentiates itself from the competitive landscape by focusing exclusively on 911/311 calls and integrating with existing emergency call-center and dispatch workflows.

R&D is organized into a single cross-functional delivery team led by the co-founder and CTO. Following the close of their seed round, the company is investing in their product velocity and is seeking a senior software engineer to join their budding engineering team.

Key Responsibilities

• Software architecture and engineering:
  • Design and implement event‑driven, real‑time, highly concurrent systems leveraging advanced concurrency patterns, asynchronous messaging, and performance optimizations to ensure low‑latency, high‑throughput and fault‑tolerance.
• Systems architecture and engineering:
  • Collaborate on cloud‑native architecture, infrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines, autoscaling and load‑balancing strategies, security best practices, and observability efforts.
• AI platform engineering and MLOps:
  • Integrate LLMs and other emerging AI technologies, select and potentially fine‑tune models, orchestrate deployments, and monitor performance.
• Audio processing:
  • Design, implement, and optimize audio‑processing pipelines for capabilities such as speech‑to‑text, text‑to‑speech, voice‑activity detection, endpointing, noise filtering, and emotion detection.
• Technical leadership and mentoring:
  • Guide architecture and design decisions, conduct code reviews, establish best practices, and coach team members to accelerate their technical growth while reinforcing a culture of continuous improvement.

Tech Stack

• Back-end: Python, Elixir (Phoenix, Membrane)
• Database: PostgreSQL
• Cloud provider: Azure
• Machine Learning & AI services: OpenAI, LiveKit
• Infrastructure as code / containerization: Terraform, Docker
• Monitoring, alerting & observability: New Relic, incident.io

Qualifications

• You have 5+ years of experience in back-end or full-stack software engineering.
• You have experience with natural language processing (NLP), voice agents, conversational AI, or shipping LLM-enabled products/features to production.
• You have designed and implemented highly concurrent, fault‑tolerant services.
• You have an adaptable, resilient disposition suited to a dynamic startup environment.

It’s a Bonus If

• You have helped build or scale a SaaS venture.
• You have developed and/or integrated voice‑AI or audio‑processing solutions in production (ideally with LiveKit).
• You have experience with telephony systems (PSTN, SIP protocols, PBX architectures).
• You have experience with WebRTC technologies (peer-to-peer media streaming, signaling protocols, ICE/STUN/TURN for NAT traversal, data channels, and client-server integration).
• You have experience with Vector databases and similarity search pipelines.
• You have an acute interest in building impact-oriented technology and saving lives with software.