Platform Engineer

Phonic, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Meals provided

Healthcare coverage

Team off-sites

Job summary

Phonic, Inc. in San Francisco is seeking a Platform Engineer to build and maintain the real-time voice AI infrastructure. You will own cloud, deployment pipelines, and observability, enabling the team to push cutting-edge AI capabilities safely at scale.

You will collaborate with backend engineers and researchers, define SLOs, improve tooling, and drive reliability and performance in latency-sensitive systems, with opportunities for equity and growth.

Qualifications

• Experience with cloud infrastructure (GCP, AWS, or Azure) and containerized deployments (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Proficiency with infrastructure-as-code tooling (Terraform or equivalent).
• Track record of improving reliability and developer experience in high-throughput, latency-sensitive systems.
• Ownership mindset: proactive problem solving and end-to-end ownership.

Responsibilities

• Design and maintain the core infrastructure powering Phonic's real-time voice AI platform—cloud infrastructure, deployment pipelines, and observability systems.
• Build internal tooling and abstractions that improve engineering velocity across the team.
• Own reliability and performance at scale—define SLOs, instrument monitoring, and lead incident response when things go wrong.
• Partner with backend engineers and researchers to translate AI capabilities into production-ready systems.
• Drive improvements to how we build, test, and ship software—reducing friction across the development lifecycle.

Skills

Cloud infrastructure

Reliability

Ownership mindset

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Terraform

Job description

About Phonic

Phonic is a product and research lab focused on powering the most realistic, human-like voice AI conversations. We've re-thought the entire stack in pursuit of this goal, from models to product, to create voice agents that feel like they truly understand you, respond emotionally and perform agentic tasks with frontier intelligence.

Our team includes top-tier AI researchers, international olympiad medalists, and former founders.

Our customers include companies that are building voice-native AI products in industries such as customer support, healthcare, logistics, and recruiting. We have raised over $30M from tier 1 VCs.

About the Team

Phonic has a very talent-dense and close-knit team. We collaborate with high trust and are constantly trying to improve how we work to deliver world-class research and product. Everyone takes ownership in what they do and they aren’t afraid to dive in headfirst into new problems.

About The Role

As a Platform Engineer at Phonic, you'll build the foundation that lets our engineering team move fast without breaking things. Real-time voice AI at our scale is unforgiving — latency is visible, reliability is everything, and our systems need to perform flawlessly across hundreds of thousands of mission‑critical calls every day. You'll own the infrastructure, tooling, and deployment systems that make that possible, freeing our backend and research teams to focus on pushing the frontier.

What You'll Do

• Design and maintain the core infrastructure that powers Phonic's real-time voice AI platform - cloud infrastructure, deployment pipelines, and observability systems
• Build internal tooling and abstractions that improve engineering velocity across the team
• Own reliability and performance at scale - define SLOs, instrument monitoring, and lead incident response when things go wrong
• Partner closely with backend engineers and researchers to translate cutting‑edge AI capabilities into production‑ready systems
• Drive improvements to how we build, test, and ship software - reducing friction across the entire development lifecycle

What You'll Bring

• Strong experience with cloud infrastructure - GCP, AWS, or Azure - and containerized deployments (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Proficiency with infrastructure-as-code tooling (Terraform or equivalent)
• A track record of improving reliability and developer experience in high‑throughput, latency‑sensitive systems
• Ownership mindset: you don't wait to be asked and you see problems through to the end

Nice To Have

• Experience with real-time or streaming systems (WebSockets, WebRTC, or similar)
• Familiarity with ML/AI infrastructure — model serving, GPU workloads, or inference optimization
• Strong proficiency in TypeScript and Python
• You are a former founder

Benefits

• Top‑tier compensation: in order to get the best talent, we provide salary and equity that recognize your skillset
• Meals: free breakfast, lunch, and dinner provided in the office
• Healthcare: Comprehensive health, dental, and vision
• We have regular off‑sites and team celebrations