Lead Engineer

Canary Technologies

Lead Engineer driving architecture for Canary's Voice AI product, managing a team and collaborating with Product Managers.

Posted 5/29/2026full-timeRemote • 🇺🇸 United StatesSeniorWebsite

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

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

Requirements

What you’ll need

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

Benefits

Comp & perks

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!
Personal Travel Reimbursement: If you stay at a hotel that Canary works with, we provide a credit towards your stay.

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

backend developmentreal-time systemsstreaming systemslow-latency serviceshigh-quality product deliverytelephony integrationvoice AIconversational AIASRTTS

Soft Skills

leadershipmentoringcollaborationcommunicationself-motivationdiligencecuriositythoughtfulnessclarityaccountability