Voice Experience Designer, Agentic Voice

Dialpad; San Ramon (CA); On-site; USD 147,000 - 186,000; Full time

Job summary

Dialpad is seeking a Voice Experience (VX) Designer in California to own the agent’s voice, personality, and interactions. You will shape personas, standards, and the quality bar for the Speech engineering team, influencing model behavior through prompts.

Based in our San Ramon, CA office, you will partner with AI engineers to craft escalation instincts, graceful recovery, and turn-taking strategies that ensure a human handoff preserves context while maintaining a consistent, empathetic AI

Qualifications

• 5+ years shaping voice user interfaces and conversation systems.
• Bachelor’s in Linguistics, Communication, Psychology, Design, or equivalent practical experience.
• Prompt engineering and orchestration that alter model outputs without code.
• Working fluency with TTS controls to set platform standards.
• A portfolio highlighting voice systems and interactive logic, not static flows.
• Experience in regulated, high-stakes domains is a bonus.

Responsibilities

• Own the agent persona and ensure consistency across every vertical shipped.
• Set the voice palette and house standards for speech engineering teams.
• Define the universal quality bar and link persona decisions to core metrics.
• Design behavior through prompting in collaboration with AI engineers.
• Own handoff and turn-taking patterns preserving context when routed to humans.
• Design for emotional states across happy paths and high-stakes moments.

Skills

VUI design

Character writing

Conversation design

Prompt engineering

TTS controls

Portfolio

Regulated domains

Education

Bachelor's degree in Linguistics/Communication/Psychology/Design

Job description

Your role

As a Voice Experience (VX) Designer, you will own the voices, personalities, and interactions that make an AI agent feel intuitive, empathetic, and human. Reporting directly to the VP of AI Products, you will define personas, standards, and quality bar for the Speech engineering team and be involved in shaping model behavior through prompts.

This role can be based in our San Ramon, US office.

What you’ll do

• Own the persona: define the agent's global voice, character, and personality, ensuring consistency across every vertical shipped.
• Set the voice palette & house standards: establish pacing, prosody, and emphasis standards for speech engineering and field teams.
• Define the quality bar: own the universal platform quality bar—consistency, fluency, perceived latency and trade-offs—and link persona decisions to core metrics such as resolution, containment, and sentiment.
• Design behavior with prompts: partner with AI engineers to orchestrate escalation instincts, confirmation patterns, and graceful recovery using advanced prompting rather than rigid dialogue trees.
• Own handoff & turn‑taking experience: design standard handoff patterns that preserve context when a caller is passed to a human and shape turn‑taking and barge‑in behavior.
• Design for emotional states: research and design for distinct user emotions, ensuring the agent adapts across happy paths and high‑stakes moments.

Skills you’ll bring

• Experience: 5+ years shaping voice user interfaces (VUI), character writing, conversation design, or complex conversational/agentic systems.
• Education: bachelor’s in Linguistics, Communication, Psychology, Design, or equivalent practical experience.
• Prompt fluency: fluency with LLM‑based agent behaviors, prompt engineering, and orchestration—design choices that alter model outputs without code.
• TTS literacy: working fluency with TTS controls (voice selection, prosodic control) to set platform standards.
• Portfolio: an exceptional portfolio highlighting voice systems, written persona standards, and interactive logic rather than static flow diagrams.
• Taste: strong taste and an ear for dialogue—ability to articulate a character on a page and translate it into consistent AI behavior under pressure.
• Bonus: experience in regulated, high‑stakes verticals such as healthcare, financial services, or legal.

Salary range for California: $147,000—$186,000 USD (target base salary only, not including bonus, equity, or benefits).

Dialpad is an equal‑opportunity employer. We are dedicated to creating a community of inclusion and an environment free from discrimination or harassment.