Staff Software Engineer at Decagon building real-time voice agent systems for conversational AI. Lead architecture and evolution of voice platform handling speech understanding, synthesis, and dialogue timing across millions of interactions.
About Decagon
Decagon is the leading conversational AI platform empowering every brand to deliver concierge customer experiences.
Our technology enables industry-defining enterprises like Avis Budget Group, Block’s Cash App and Square, Chime, Oura Health, and Hunter Douglas to deploy AI agents that power personalized, deeply satisfying interactions across voice, chat, email, SMS, and every other channel.
We’re building a future where customer experiences are being redefined from support tickets and hold music to faster resolutions, richer conversations, and deeper relationships. We’re proud to be backed by world-class investors who share that vision, including a16z, Accel, Bain Capital Ventures, Coatue, and Index Ventures, along with many others.
We’re an in-office company, driven by a shared commitment to excellence and velocity. Our values — Just Get It Done, Invent What Customers Want, Winner’s Mindset, and The Polymath Principle — shape how we work and grow as a team.
About the Team
The Voice Agent team builds the real-time systems that allow Decagon agents to carry natural conversations across our omnichannels (phone, web, mobile, etc). We work across speech understanding, audio streaming, synthesis quality, and the voice specific execution logic that enables timing, pacing, and responsive dialogue.
Our systems must remain accurate, responsive, and stable at scale. Voice is one of the most technically challenging surfaces in conversational AI, and our small team owns this entire capability end-to-end.
About the Role
As a Staff Software Engineer focused on Voice Agent, you will lead the architecture and evolution of Decagon’s voice platform. You will drive multi-quarter projects that improve timing, responsiveness, audio quality, and reliability across millions of interactions.
You will collaborate with Research to integrate the next generation of speech models, with Infra to push the boundaries of latency and performance, and with Product to bring new voice capabilities to customers. You will help set engineering standards for voice, mentor senior engineers, and raise the technical bar for one of Decagon’s most important surfaces.
In this role, you will
Own the architecture of Decagon’s real-time voice runtime and shape its long-term roadmap
Lead initiatives that improve speech understanding, synthesis quality, and conversational timing
Define reliability, testing, and observability standards for live voice interactions
Build frameworks that make voice systems easy to debug, measure, and iterate on
Mentor senior engineers and help expand the technical culture of the Voice group
Your background looks something like this
8+ years of engineering experience with significant technical leadership
Expertise in real-time systems, streaming pipelines, or audio-based applications
Ability to define architectural direction and lead cross-functional projects
Strong debugging skills across audio, networking, and model-driven systems
Experience mentoring engineers and influencing engineering standards
Even better if you have
Experience with speech recognition or synthesis systems
Experience with VAD, streaming protocols, or other real-time audio systems
Experience designing or maintaining LLM-driven applications
Experience optimizing performance for low-latency use cases
Compensation
$200K – $400K + Offers Equity
This range reflects the expected compensation for this role. Compensation within the range is determined based on experience, skills, and the scope of responsibilities, with flexibility for candidates who demonstrate exceptional impact.
In addition to base salary, we offer competitive equity. Final compensation may vary based on location within the United States.
Benefits
We proudly offer the following benefits for our full-time employees:
Take what you need vacation policy
Medical, Dental, and Vision benefits for you and your family
Life Insurance and Disability Benefits
Retirement Plan (e.g., 401K, pension)
Parental Leave
Fertility and family building benefits through Carrot
Daily lunches and snacks in the office to keep you at your best
These benefits are described in more detail in Decagon’s policies, may vary by location, and can change at any time according to applicable compensation and benefits plans.