Senior Real-Time Voice AI Engineer

Zendesk; Austin (TX); Hybrid; USD 145,000 - 217,000; Full time

Job summary

Zendesk is seeking a Senior Full Stack Engineer to build the real-time voice AI product that powers live conversations with low latency and natural flow. You will develop backend services and web experiences that make voice interactions feel human.

Join a collaborative team focused on AI, automation, and scalable architecture, working across telephony, WebRTC, and ML/speech integrations to deliver polished customer experiences.

Qualifications

• 3+ years building production software with backend engineering experience.
• Experience with real-time/event-driven systems (WebRTC, SIP, streaming APIs).
• Proficiency in Python or equivalent backend languages and async architectures.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement backend services powering real-time voice conversations.
• Build integrations for telephony, WebRTC, real-time audio processing, and external AI services.
• Ship end-to-end product features across backend systems and web experiences when required.
• Improve platform reliability and performance: monitoring, tracing, autoscaling, and failure recovery.
• Address real-time interaction challenges such as turn-taking, interruptions, responsiveness, and graceful handoff to humans.
• Partner with product and design to deliver voice experiences that feel polished and human.

Skills

Backend fundamentals

Real-time systems

Latency optimization

Cross-functional collaboration

Python proficiency

Tools

Python

Job description

Zendesk is seeking a Senior Full Stack Engineer to build the real-time voice AI product that powers live conversations with low latency and natural flow. You will develop backend services and web experiences that make voice interactions feel human.

Join a collaborative team focused on AI, automation, and scalable architecture, working across telephony, WebRTC, and ML/speech integrations to deliver polished customer experiences.