Senior AI Engineer – Voice & Conversational AI

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The Senior AI Engineer - Voice & Conversational AI is responsible for designing, developing, and implementing AI-powered voice solutions that enhance customer engagement and operational efficiency at Tower Loan. This position plays a key role in advancing the company's use of artificial intelligence to support customer service, account servicing, payment reminders, and other business operations. The ideal candidate is an experienced software engineer with a strong background in conversational AI, real-time technologies, and developing secure, scalable solutions.

Duties/Responsibilities:

• Design, develop, and maintain real-time AI voice applications using large language models, speech-to-speech technologies, and conversational AI platforms.
• Develop automated conversational workflows for customer service, payment reminders, promise-to-pay interactions, account servicing, and other business needs.
• Configure AI prompts, conversation policies, security controls, escalation procedures, and automated tool-calling capabilities.
• Implement conversation management features, including interruption handling, contextual awareness, fallback logic, and transfers to live representatives.
• Develop and integrate applications using OpenAI Live/Realtime APIs and other real-time AI technologies.
• Manage streaming audio, transcription, session processing, and system integrations to ensure reliable, responsive AI interactions.
• Integrate AI voice applications with SIP, VoIP, PBX systems, and enterprise telecommunications infrastructure to support inbound and outbound calling.
• Develop and maintain applications, APIs, and microservices using C#, .NET, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, or other appropriate technologies.
• Integrate AI applications with company databases, customer systems, payment platforms, messaging systems, and other business applications.
• Develop secure AI-enabled functions for account lookup, customer verification, payment-related interactions, scheduling, and transfers to live representatives.
• Implement safeguards to ensure AI interactions comply with company policies, security requirements, and applicable legal and regulatory standards.
• Maintain accurate and auditable records of AI conversations, system activities, decisions, and automated transactions.
• Develop and perform automated testing, conversation evaluations, and quality assurance processes to improve AI accuracy, reliability, and performance.
• Monitor system performance, including call outcomes, response times, errors, escalation rates, and other operational metrics.
• Design and maintain scalable, highly available systems with appropriate controls for system capacity, error handling, and service interruptions.
• Lead technical development from initial concept through production implementation while maintaining system security, reliability, and cost efficiency.
• Serve as a senior technical resource for conversational AI technologies and provide guidance to other engineers.
• Perform all other duties as assigned.

Required Skills/Abilities:

• Strong software engineering skills with experience developing and supporting production applications.
• Advanced knowledge of APIs, microservices, distributed systems, and real-time application architectures.
• Strong understanding of large language models, generative AI, conversational AI, and prompt engineering.
• Advanced troubleshooting, problem-solving, and systems analysis skills.
• Ability to design secure, scalable, and reliable technical solutions.
• Strong organizational and project management skills with the ability to manage multiple priorities effectively.

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, Artificial Intelligence, or a related field preferred. Equivalent professional experience may be considered.
• Five or more years of professional software development experience preferred.
• Demonstrated experience developing and delivering production software systems required.
• Experience developing AI-powered applications, particularly conversational AI or large language model solutions, strongly preferred.
• Experience with real-time voice technologies, streaming APIs, SIP, RTP, WebRTC, WebSocket, or enterprise telephony systems preferred.
• Experience with OpenAI Live/Realtime APIs and related AI development platforms preferred.
• Proficiency with C#, .NET, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, or similar programming languages preferred.
• Experience with technologies such as SQL Server, Redis, Kafka, Docker, Kubernetes, REST APIs, Git, and CI/CD pipelines preferred.
• Familiarity with speech recognition, text-to-speech, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), AI evaluation frameworks, and AI safety controls preferred.
• Experience in consumer finance, lending, collections, banking, payment processing, telecommunications, or another regulated industry preferred.

Physical Requirements:

• Stand, walk, and/or sit for eight (8) hours a day. 
• Communicate effectively, verbally, written, in person, via telephone, or electronically. 
• Lift and maneuver up to 20 lbs.

The above description outlines the most significant job functions performed, but may include other similar functions or assignments not explicitly mentioned.