Development Manager

Zendesk, Inc.; Wakefield; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading tech firm in Wakefield is seeking an Engineering Manager for its Voice Agent Team. You will lead a team of engineers to build advanced voice-based products and ensure high-quality outcomes. The role involves mentorship, fostering collaboration, and managing various technologies, focusing on scalability and performance. A hybrid work arrangement provides both onsite and remote work flexibility, making this role ideal for a driven leader looking to innovate in conversational AI.

Qualifications

• Proven experience in building and scaling voice-based products.
• Strong technical understanding of speech technologies.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead a cross-functional engineering team to build conversational AI.
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement and collaboration.
• Accountability for the delivery and product quality within the team.

Skills

Building and scaling voice-based products

Mentoring teams

Complex architectures management

Facilitating discussions

Iterative development

Job description

The Agentic Tribe is revolutionizing the chatbot and voice assistance landscape with Gen3, a cutting‑edge AI Agent system that pushes the boundaries of conversational AI. Gen3 is not your typical chatbot; it’s a goal‑oriented, dynamic, and truly conversational system capable of reasoning, planning, and adapting to user needs in real‑time. By leveraging a multi‑agent architecture and advanced language models, Gen3 delivers personalized and engaging user experiences, moving beyond scripted interactions to handle complex tasks and “off‑script” inquiries with ease. As the Engineering Manager for the Voice Agent Team, you’ll lead a team of talented engineers and researchers to build the future of conversational AI. Your core mission is to develop and scale multiple voice agents, creating powerful tools that allow our clients to deploy seamless, voice‑first experiences. You’ll oversee the development of core technologies like speech recognition, STS‑TTS, Realtime Voice models, etc. while also guiding the creation of a powerful framework for agent development. A key part of your role will be ensuring our technology is highly scalable and performs with minimal latency, shaping the tools that empower clients to transform customer service and create new interactive experiences. You will directly manage about 6‑8 engineers from various skill sets (Frontend and Backend) and work closely with stakeholders across the department. The number of people and skill sets you interact with might be subject to change as we gear up the organization for future challenges.

Responsibilities

• Lead a cross‑functional team, guiding them toward achieving their full potential
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement and collaboration, driving your teams to innovate and continuously discover and evaluate new technologies
• Empower your team through coaching, mentorship, and skill development
• Foster a culture of micro feedback, mutual accountability, shared ownership, and a bottom‑up culture in close collaboration with the other Engineering Managers
• Enable engineers to push for best practices inside their discipline aiming at greater productivity, cleaner code and product quality
• Collaborate with fellow Engineering Managers and Chapter Leads to keep our engineering group focused and effective
• Facilitate communication between Engineers, Product Managers and stakeholders within the RnD department and across the business, fostering understanding and alignment
• Accountability for delivery and product quality in your team

Qualifications

• Proven experience in building and scaling voice‑based products, with a strong understanding of technologies such as speech‑to‑text, text‑to‑speech, and speech‑to‑speech systems
• Enthusiastic mentor with the ability to inspire teams, fostering professional development and empowering teams to reach their full potential
• Strong technical background and professional experience developing and maintaining complex architectures
• Proven track record of successfully managing and motivating engineering teams, driving them toward achieving ambitious goals
• Experience scaling teams and leading engineering teams through change
• Understanding the value of diverse perspectives and actively seeking input from others to achieve optimal outcomes, acknowledging that your own viewpoint may not always be the best
• Excellent at facilitating discussions and communicating with various stakeholders, ensuring clarity and alignment across teams and departments
• Experience working in collaborative teams, leveraging practices like pair programming and code reviews to promote knowledge sharing and enhance team performance
• Strong expertise in iterative development and balancing risks
• Commitment to quality and a deep understanding of how to achieve and maintain it within complex architectures and software designs

Hybrid Work Arrangement

Our hybrid experience is designed at the team level to give you a rich onsite experience packed with connection, collaboration, learning, and celebration – while also giving you flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. This role must attend our local office for part of the week. The specific in‑office schedule is to be determined by the hiring manager.