Principal Software Engineer, Robot Applications & Voice AI

Cerence; United States; Remote; USD 166,000 - 264,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonus opportunity

Insurance coverage (medical, dental, &

vision, life, and disability

Paid time off

Paid holidays

RRSP contributions

Equity awards

Remote and/or hybrid work available

Job summary

Cerence seeks a Principal Software Engineer for Robot Applications & Voice AI in the California Bay Area. You will drive the cognitive layer, building advanced voice apps and multi-modal systems for humanoid robots, turning human intent into action.

Work with experts in robotics, cloud and embedded systems, delivering production-ready software and complex AI-enabled behaviors across edge and cloud environments.

Qualifications

• Orchestration & logic frameworks: strong proficiency in BehaviorTree.CPP, state machines, workflow orchestration engines, or task-planning architectures.
• Cognitive AI & agent systems: hands-on experience with LLMs, VLMs, tool-calling architectures, agent frameworks, RAG systems, or semantic memory platforms.
• Programming: 5+ years of professional software engineering with Python and/or C++.
• Application architecture: designing scalable, API-driven, distributed, event-driven systems.
• Edge compute management: optimizing software on resource-constrained edge hardware with intermittent connectivity.
• Cloud & AI services: integrating cloud AI services, model serving, and containerized deployments.
• Software quality & production delivery: automated testing, debugging, monitoring, observability, CI/CD.
• Human-robot interaction mindset: designing natural, context-aware human-machine experiences.

Responsibilities

• Application Layer & Business Logic: Implement high-level application software, interaction workflows, and robotic behavioral state machines.
• Intent-to-Action Orchestration: Translate human speech, gestures, and contextual information into robotic tasks.
• Multi-Modal Interaction Fusion: Integrate vision, detection, scene understanding, spatial tracking, and voice interactions for context.
• Voice Application Engineering: Develop voice apps with STT, NLU, dialog management, wake-word, and TTS interfaces.
• Agentic AI Development: Build workflows combining LLMs, VLMs, memory, tool calling, reasoning, and robotic capabilities.
• Robot Capability Integration: Consume and orchestrate navigation, manipulation, perception, and device-control services.
• Edge/Cloud Partitioning: Balance low-latency local execution with cloud AI services.
• Multi-Device & Ecosystem Integrations: Integrate robots with mobile devices, smart home ecosystems, enterprise apps, and cloud APIs.
• Data Loop Contribution: Build telemetry, logging, and evaluation for model improvement.
• Deployment & Production Readiness: Testing, observability, CI/CD, and production deployment practices.

Skills

Orchestration & Logic Frameworks

Cognitive AI & Agent Systems

Python

C++

Application Architecture

Edge Compute Management

Cloud & AI Services

Software Quality & Production Delivery

Human-Robot Interaction Mindset

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Software Engineering, AI

Tools

ROS2

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Job description

Cerence seeks a Principal Software Engineer for Robot Applications & Voice AI in the California Bay Area. You will drive the cognitive layer, building advanced voice apps and multi-modal systems for humanoid robots, turning human intent into action.

Work with experts in robotics, cloud and embedded systems, delivering production-ready software and complex AI-enabled behaviors across edge and cloud environments.