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Applied AI Engineer (Voice) - Enterprise

San Francisco & Palo Alto, CA

About xAI

xAI’s mission is to create AI systems that can accurately understand the universe and aid humanity in its pursuit of knowledge.

Our team is small, highly motivated, and focused on engineering excellence. This organization is for individuals who appreciate challenging themselves and thrive on curiosity.

We operate with a flat organizational structure. All employees are expected to be hands-on and to contribute directly to the company’s mission. Leadership is given to those who show initiative and consistently deliver excellence. Work ethic and strong prioritization skills are important.

All engineers and researchers are expected to have strong communication skills. They should be able to concisely and accurately share knowledge with their teammates.

About the Role

You will work directly with our enterprise customers, owning the strategy and execution of Voice AI solutions. You’ll act as a specialized AI startup CTO, focusing on voice-driven technologies, leading high-stakes projects, and delivering measurable impact. If you excel at combining deep technical expertise with customer-focused innovation, particularly in the Voice AI domain, we’d love to hear from you. Your day-to-day work may include:

  • Designing and building end-to-end Voice AI solutions, from understanding customer pain points to scoping product specs and deploying LLM-powered voice interfaces.
  • Benchmarking voice models, writing evaluations, or analyzing performance to identify weaknesses in speech recognition, synthesis, or natural language understanding.
  • Improving model performance through system prompt tuning, fine-tuning voice-specific models, or optimizing for low-latency voice interactions.
  • Analyzing voice request logs, prompt data, or audio inputs to enhance system accuracy and user experience.
  • Building internal tools to automate voice AI workflows, such as transcription pipelines or real-time voice processing.
  • Enhancing xAI’s Voice AI SDKs or developer documentation based on customer feedback and enterprise use cases.

Focus

  • Deep expertise in solving enterprise voice AI challenges, delivering robust and scalable voice-driven solutions.
  • Proven ability to ship high-quality code and complete voice AI projects in demanding environments. 
  • Ability to handle ambiguity, adapt to evolving requirements, and prioritize effectively in a fast-paced startup setting.
  • Exceptional communication skills to clarify voice-specific requirements with customers and drive projects to successful completion.
  • Emphasis on designing, implementing, and maintaining efficient voice AI architectures, including speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and real-time voice processing.
  • Proficiency in managing complex codebases and optimizing voice data pipelines for high-throughput, low-latency performance.
  • Define critical benchmarks for Voice AI performance: Establish key performance benchmarks tailored to enterprise voice use cases, such as speech recognition accuracy, natural language understanding, and real-time latency, reflecting customer prompt distributions.
  • Initiate human data collection for Voice AI: Design and manage campaigns to acquire high-quality voice and conversational data from diverse enterprise contexts, supporting model training and validation.
  • Drive Voice AI integration with enterprise partners: Collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate Voice AI capabilities into enterprise workflows, enabling seamless adoption in areas like customer service, virtual assistants, and telephony systems.

Requirements

An ideal candidate meets at least the following:

  • Strong engineering background.
  • Experience interfacing between technical and customer-facing teams
  • Excellent verbal and written communication skills in English.
  • Ability to translate business and voice-specific product needs into technical solutions.
  • Proven experience implementing voice AI or machine learning products, including APIs, back-end, and front-end voice interfaces.
  • Strong proficiency in Python and/or TypeScript.
  • Solid understanding of HTTP protocol and real-time communication protocols (e.g., WebRTC).

Standout Experiences

Candidates may distinguish themselves with:

  • Building evaluations for voice AI capabilities, such as speech recognition accuracy or naturalness of synthesized speech.
  • Demonstrating expertise in machine learning fundamentals, including voice model evaluation, training, or fine-tuning.
  • Deploying voice AI models to production, optimizing for low-latency and high-reliability environments.
  • Writing developer documentation or creating voice-specific SDKs.
  • Working with large-scale audio datasets, optimizing voice processing pipelines, or scaling systems for enterprise-grade workloads.
  • Using infrastructure tools like Pulumi or Terraform for deploying voice AI systems.

Interview Process

After submitting your application, our team reviews your CV and Statement of Exceptional Work. If selected, you’ll be invited to a 15-minute technical phone interview where we’ll discuss your background and voice AI specialization. Successful candidates proceed to the main process, consisting of four technical interviews:

  • 15 min Technical Screen
  • 2x 45 min Coding Interview (focused on voice AI or related challenges)

The Statement of Exceptional Work is a critical factor in our evaluation.

We aim to complete the main process within one week. All applications are reviewed by our technical team, not recruiters. Interviews are conducted via Google Meet or in-person.

Benefits

  • Competitive cash-based compensation
  • xAI equity
  • Private health and dental insurance
  • Unlimited time off subject to prior approval

Annual Salary Range

$180,000 - $440,000 USD



xAI is an equal opportunity employer and does not unlawfully discriminate based on race, color, religion, ethnicity, ancestry, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, disability, medical conditions, genetic information, marital status, military or veteran status, or any other applicable legally protected characteristics. 

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all applicable federal, state, and local laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. 

For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates:

xAI reasonably believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: 

  • Access to information technology systems and confidential information, including proprietary and trade secret information, and/or user data;
  • Interacting with internal and/or external clients and colleagues; and
  • Exercising sound judgment.

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