Lead Engineer

 

 

 

 

About the Role

We're looking for a Lead Engineer to drive the next phase of Canary's Voice AI product — the platform that handles guest calls for hotels end-to-end, from reservations and modifications to service requests and intelligent transfers. You'll own the architecture of a real-time, telephony-grounded system. You'll lead a pod of engineers, set the bar as a hands-on IC, and partner closely with Product to ship voice experiences that operate reliably at scale across major hospitality brands. The systems you design will speak directly to guests, so passion and discipline around quality, latency, and operational excellence are essential.

Directly manage a pod of engineers responsible for Canary's Voice AI product, including inbound call handling, reservation booking and modification flows, service request creation, and intelligent call transfer

Set an example as an IC in terms of both the quality and velocity of code that you ship

Own the architecture and its evolution across telephony integrations (Twilio, Bandwidth, etc), real-time AI components (Deepgram, ElevenLabs, OpenAI), and integration points with PMS Gateway, CRS Gateway, and the Ticket Gateway

Drive measurable improvements in call containment, transfer quality, latency, and cost-per-call by deeply understanding metrics and how hotels and guests use the product

Partner closely with Product Managers to inform roadmap and prioritization, with a strong voice on product decisions for the Voice AI surface area

Independently mentor and advise engineers in the pod, and build engineering execution plans, break down work, and assign it across the team

Run pod processes autonomously and escalate appropriately when required

Participate in hiring and interviewing for the Voice AI team and broader engineering org

8+ years of a strong engineering background

2+ years of proven experience of leading successful engineering teams

Solid knowledge of developing backend applications

Hands-on experience building real-time or streaming systems — voice, audio, video, or low-latency event-driven services

Have a strong demonstrated ability to ship high-quality products that operate reliably at scale

Self-motivated, collaborative, and diligent work ethic

Excellent communication skills. You love being part of a diverse team, building consensus, and establishing credibility. You are a Class-A communicator: curious, thoughtful, clear, and (mostly) correct

Comfort with ambiguity and is eager to embrace ownership and accountability

Bonus: Experience with conversational AI, LLM agent frameworks (e.g. LiveKit Agents, Pipecat), telephony (Twilio, SIP), ASR/TTS providers (Deepgram, ElevenLabs, Cartesia), or evaluations / testing harnesses for agentic systems

We also work hard to ensure Canary is a fun and exciting place to work! Here are some of the additional benefits:

 

Canary Days:  As a company we want to ensure that the team has time to recharge. Each month we provide company wide days off to ensure there is at least one extended weekend or day off.

 

Self Improvement Club: We meet each month and share our personal goals for the month. Each individual is provided a budget towards any purchases that help us achieve these goals.

 

Professional Development Chats: We provide budget to help drive cross functional professional development conversations across the organization.

 

Travel Reimbursement: Team members are able to visit our offices across New York, San Francisco or Dallas when they choose, and are provided a travel stipend for doing so.  Spend time working with the team in their office, and use the rest of your time exploring a new city!