Engineering Leader

THE ROLE

We are looking for an Engineering Leader to manage and scale multiple product lines in the Voice, BPO, and Workforce Management space. This is a high-impact leadership role that sits at the intersection of real-time voice systems, operations research, and data-intensive platform engineering.

You will report directly to the Head of Engineering and own the engineering organization that builds the infrastructure powering Ema's Voice AI Employees, Agent QA, auto-learning pipelines, rich analytics, and workforce optimization capabilities — all operating as scalable, multi-tenant systems deployed across global geographies.

You will collaborate with Product, ML/AI, and Go-to-Market teams to translate customer needs into production systems that handle high volumes of voice data, deliver real-time insights, and continuously improve through automated learning loops. As the owner of multiple product lines, you will balance roadmap priorities across Voice, BPO operations, and WFM (work force management) — ensuring each product evolves cohesively while meeting distinct customer needs.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

SCALABLE MULTI-TENANT SYSTEMS

• Architect and build multi-tenant systems that serve enterprise customers across geographies with strict data residency, isolation, and compliance requirements.
• Design high-throughput ingestion systems capable of processing large volumes of voice data, call metadata, and operational telemetry in near real-time.
• Make foundational architectural decisions on data stores, stream processing, and storage tiers — balancing query performance, cost, and operational simplicity.
• Champion SOLID principles, clean architecture, and engineering rigor across all codebases — ensuring systems are testable, extensible, and maintainable at scale.

TEAM BUILDING & ENGINEERING CULTURE

• Recruit, hire, and develop senior engineers across a multi-disciplinary function spanning voice engineering, backend systems, data engineering, and applied operations research.
• Establish engineering standards, code review culture, and a strong bias toward shipping — with equal commitment to system reliability and customer experience.
• Coach and grow senior/staff engineers into technical leaders; manage engineering managers as the organization scales.
• Drive cross-functional alignment with Product, ML/AI, and Go-to-Market teams to ensure the platform evolves in lockstep with customer needs and market feedback.

VOICE PLATFORM & AGENT QA

• Own the end-to-end engineering for Ema's AgentQA capabilities — real-time voice pipelines, telephony integrations, and voice-to-action workflows.
• Build and scale the Agent QA platform: automated call scoring, compliance monitoring, sentiment analysis, and coaching feedback loops.
• Design auto-learning systems that continuously improve voice agents from production interactions — closed-loop feedback, model retraining triggers, and quality regression detection.
• Deliver rich voice analytics: call volume trends, handle time distributions, first-call resolution metrics, agent performance dashboards, and anomaly detection.
• Build scalable voice pipeline across geographies – keeping in mind PII, security and compliance requirements.

WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT & OPERATIONS RESEARCH

• Build WFM capabilities including demand forecasting, shift scheduling, real-time adherence monitoring, and capacity planning — applying operations research techniques to optimize workforce utilization.
• Design and implement optimization algorithms for headcount modeling, skill-based routing, and workload balancing across multi-site, multi-timezone contact center operations.
• Partner with ML/AI teams to integrate predictive models for call volume forecasting, attrition risk, and staffing efficiency.

WHAT WE LOOK FOR

REQUIRED

• 12+ years of software engineering experience, with 4+ years leading engineering teams of 8+ engineers at high-growth startups or top-tier tech companies.
• Deep expertise in building real-time, data-intensive systems.
• Strong foundation in data stores and storage systems: relational databases, time-series stores, columnar analytics engines, and caching layers — with the judgment to choose the right tool for the workload.
• Experience building quality software using AI-driven tools and workflows.
• Track record of taking products from 0→1 and iterating rapidly based on customer feedback.
• Hands-on proficiency with SOLID principles, clean architecture, and design patterns — you write and review production code and lead by example on system design.
• Experience building scalable multi-tenant SaaS platforms with data isolation, geo-distributed deployments, and compliance requirements (SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA).
• Track record of building ingestion systems for high volumes of load — event-driven architectures, stream processing (Kafka, Flink, or equivalent), and batch/real-time hybrid pipelines.
• Strong product sense: ability to deeply understand customer problems in contact center, voice, and workforce domains and translate them into clean technical solutions.
• Proven ability to hire, develop, and retain high-caliber engineers across multiple disciplines in competitive markets.

GOOD TO HAVE

• Experience in voice/telephony systems: WebRTC, SIP, voice-over-IP infrastructure, or contact center platforms.
• Background in operations research or optimization: scheduling algorithms, linear/integer programming, constraint satisfaction, or demand forecasting models.
• Experience building analytics platforms: OLAP systems, real-time dashboards, metric computation engines, or BI infrastructure.
• Prior work on auto-learning or continuous improvement systems: feedback loops from production data, automated retraining pipelines, or quality monitoring systems.
• Experience with AI/ML-powered products in enterprise settings — agentic automation, LLM orchestration, or AI-driven UX.
• Familiarity with WFM or contact center operations — staffing models, Erlang-based capacity planning, or real-time adherence systems.

WHY EMA

• Build at the intersection of Voice AI, operations research, and enterprise-scale systems — a rare combination of deeply technical challenges with direct customer impact.
• Shape the engineering foundation of a category-defining AI platform — your architectural decisions will power how the world's largest enterprises run their voice and workforce operations.
• High-impact, high-visibility role with direct access to the Head of Engineering, co-founders, and enterprise customers.
• A team of exceptional engineers from Google, Meta, Microsoft Research, and top CS programs worldwide.
• Competitive compensation, meaningful equity, and the opportunity to build something that matters.

Compensation offered will be determined by factors such as location, level, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Certain roles may be eligible for variable compensation, equity, and benefits.

Ema Unlimited is an