Head of Voice AI Research

Gravitas Recruitment Group (Global) Ltd; Singapore; On-site; SGD 180,000 - 320,000; Full time

Job summary

Gravitas Recruitment Group (Global) Ltd seeks a senior Head of Voice AI Research / Principal AI Scientist to lead the development and advancement of speech and conversational AI technologies. This role blends hands-on research, architecture, strategic direction and team development.

You will own existing speech intelligence capabilities while shaping evolution towards real-time conversational AI systems, with autonomy to set priorities and align with business goals.

Qualifications

• Extensive expertise in Voice AI, speech technologies, deep learning and related disciplines.
• Ability to independently lead technically complex AI research or engineering projects.
• Strong understanding of modern neural network architectures and their application to speech processing.
• Professional working proficiency in English and Mandarin, both written and spoken.

Responsibilities

• Lead research and development of ASR, TTS and speech-enabled AI systems.
• Define and execute a long-term research strategy for real-time conversational AI.
• Provide technical direction and set architectural standards for the AI function.
• Build and develop a high-performing team of AI researchers and engineers.

Education

PhD (relevant field)

Job description

Head of Voice AI Research / Principal AI Scientist

Specialisation: Speech AI, Deep Learning & Conversational Intelligence Level: Senior Technical Leadership / Research Leadership

The Opportunity

We are seeking an accomplished Voice AI specialist to lead the development and advancement of sophisticated speech and conversational AI technologies.

This is a senior technical leadership opportunity combining hands‑on research, AI architecture, strategic direction and team development. The successful candidate will take ownership of existing speech intelligence capabilities while shaping the evolution towards more advanced, real‑time conversational AI systems.

The position offers significant autonomy in defining research priorities, making architectural decisions and balancing near‑term product improvements with longer‑term technological innovation.

Key Responsibilities

1. Speech AI Development & Optimisation

• Lead the research, development and continuous improvement of advanced Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), Text-to-Speech (TTS) and speech-enabled AI systems.
• Improve speech recognition performance across multiple languages, particularly those with limited training data and complex linguistic characteristics.
• Advance speech synthesis capabilities, focusing on naturalness, expressiveness, pronunciation accuracy and prosody.
• Develop and refine large-model post-training methodologies to improve conversational accuracy, task execution and consistency across extended interactions.
• Establish measurable performance improvements across speech quality, model reliability and real-world conversational effectiveness.
• Collaborate with engineering and product stakeholders to translate research advancements into practical, production-ready capabilities.

2. Next-Generation Conversational AI Research

• Define and execute a long-term research strategy for advanced speech-to-speech and real-time conversational AI.
• Lead the development of integrated speech architectures capable of supporting simultaneous listening, reasoning and speech generation.
• Explore emerging approaches to low-latency, continuous and bidirectional voice interactions.
• Evaluate developments in speech-language models, streaming speech processing and related deep learning architectures.
• Translate promising research concepts into scalable, deployable AI solutions.
• Establish a technical roadmap that balances research innovation with commercial and operational requirements.

3. Technical Leadership & Research Strategy

• Provide technical direction across speech AI research, model development and implementation.
• Set architectural standards, research priorities and performance expectations for the AI function.
• Determine the appropriate allocation of engineering and research resources across ongoing development and longer-term initiatives.
• Guide complex technical decisions involving model performance, scalability, reliability and deployment readiness.
• Work closely with cross-functional stakeholders to align AI development with broader organisational objectives.

4. Talent Development & Technical Representation

• Build and develop a high-performing team of AI researchers and engineers.
• Establish technical expectations, support specialist hiring and provide mentorship to research and engineering talent.
• Foster a research environment that encourages technical excellence, experimentation and practical innovation.
• Represent the organisation within the broader AI research community through technical discussions, conferences, publications and industry engagement.
• Contribute to the organisation's technical reputation through meaningful research and production achievements.
• Demonstrable expertise in Voice AI, speech technologies, deep learning or closely related research disciplines.
• Practical experience designing, developing or implementing deep learning-based ASR, TTS or speech-language models.
• Proven ability to independently lead technically complex AI research or engineering projects.
• Strong understanding of modern neural network architectures and their application to speech processing.
• Ability to connect research outcomes with production requirements and measurable system performance.
• Strong technical judgement, problem-solving capabilities and ownership of research deliverables.
• Professional working proficiency in English and Mandarin, both written and spoken.

Candidates with several years of relevant industry or research experience are encouraged to apply. Exceptional recent PhD graduates with substantial, independently delivered speech AI research or project experience will also be considered.

• Extensive technical exposure across multiple speech AI disciplines, including:
• Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)
• Speech-to-speech and conversational AI
• Voice conversion and speech generation
• Speech-language models and multimodal AI
• Real-time or streaming speech architectures
• Experience delivering speech AI systems from research and experimentation through to production deployment.
• Previous experience within established AI research organisations, advanced technology companies, academic laboratories or specialist AI ventures.
• Experience serving as a technical lead, research lead, senior AI architect or founding technical contributor.
• Demonstrated research contributions through peer-reviewed publications, recognised conference presentations, open-source development or significant production implementations.
• Strong understanding of emerging research directions in natural, interactive and low-latency speech intelligence.

What Makes This Opportunity Compelling

This position provides the opportunity to influence both the immediate technical performance and longer-term research direction of an established conversational AI technology environment.

The successful candidate will have the autonomy to shape architectural decisions, advance speech model capabilities and guide the development of increasingly sophisticated conversational systems.

It is particularly suited to an individual who combines deep technical expertise, research ambition and the ability to translate advanced AI concepts into production-grade technologies.

Ideal Profile: A technically accomplished Voice AI researcher or engineering leader with strong ASR, TTS or speech-language model expertise, capable of driving both applied development and next-generation speech AI research.