Engineering Manager

Zendesk, Inc.; Stockport; Hybrid; GBP 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading tech company in the UK is seeking an Engineering Manager for the Voice Agent Team to drive the development of voice-based AI solutions. You will lead a talented team, fostering innovation and collaboration while ensuring high-quality technology that transforms customer service. The ideal candidate has proven experience in scaling voice products and a strong technical background. This role offers a hybrid working model, giving flexibility while requiring some in-office presence.

Qualifications

• Proven experience in building and scaling voice-based products.
• Strong technical background with complex architectures.
• Excellent facilitation and communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead a cross-functional team to achieve their full potential.
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement and collaboration.
• Manage a team of 6–8 engineers across Frontend and Backend skill sets.

Skills

Building and scaling voice-based products

Mentoring and inspiring teams

Developing and maintaining complex architectures

Stakeholder communication

Iterative development

Job description

The Agentic Tribe is revolutionizing the chatbot and voice assistance landscape with Gen3, a cutting-edge AI Agent system that's pushing 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.

Overview

As the Engineering Manager for the Voice Agent Team, you will lead a group 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 will oversee the development of core technologies such as speech recognition, STS‑TTS, real‑time voice models, and guide the creation of a powerful framework for agent development.

Responsibilities

• Lead a cross‑functional team, guiding them towards 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 other Engineering Managers
• Enable engineers to adopt best practices in their discipline, aiming at greater productivity, cleaner code, and higher product quality
• Collaborate with fellow Engineering Managers and Chapter Leads to keep the 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
• Ensure the technology is highly scalable, performs with minimal latency, and empowers clients to transform customer service and create new interactive experiences
• Manage a team of 6–8 engineers across Frontend and Backend skill sets, and work closely with stakeholders across the department
• Work within a hybrid model, attending the local office as required while enjoying flexibility to work remotely part of the week

Qualifications

• Proven experience in building and scaling voice‑based products, with a strong understanding of speech‑to‑text, text‑to‑speech, and speech‑to‑speech technologies
• Enthusiastic mentor capable of inspiring 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 to achieve ambitious goals
• Experience scaling teams and leading engineering teams through change
• Deep appreciation for diverse perspectives and a proactive approach to seeking input from others to achieve optimal outcomes
• Excellent facilitation and stakeholder communication skills, ensuring clarity and alignment across teams and departments
• Experience with collaborative practices such as pair programming and code reviews to promote knowledge sharing and enhance team performance
• Strong expertise in iterative development, balancing risks, and maintaining high quality within complex architectures and software designs