Senior Software Engineer, Voice AI

Cloaked is a privacy startup dedicated to rebuilding consumer trust in how personal data is used. Our vision is to create an internet that serves the needs of its users, first and foremost - with individual privacy and opt-in at the core. Our product is a virtual "cloak" that you use as you visit any website - Facebook, Amazon, etc. It lets you choose to share all, some, or none of your private information based on your personal preference.

About the Role

We're looking for a Senior Software Engineer to lead the development and strategic direction of Call Guard, our AI call screening product. Call Guard intercepts unknown callers, runs a real-time AI conversation, and only rings users through if the call is legit - protecting them from the spam, scam, and AI voice-cloning wave. 50M+ calls screened to date.

You'll own the technical roadmap end-to-end: real-time voice agent design, conversational latency, adversarial robustness against AI-generated callers, and the cloud infrastructure underneath. Long-term, this role grows beyond Call Guard. You'll contribute across Cloaked's engineering org and help shape how we build AI-native consumer products at scale.

What will you do?

• Lead the technical roadmap and architecture for Call Guard's real-time voice AI stack
• Design and build production voice agents that converse with unknown callers, classify intent, and block scams autonomously
• Optimize real-time conversational latency end-to-end - from STT, through agent reasoning, to TTS
• Build defenses against adversarial AI callers, including voice-cloned attacks targeting our users
• Integrate and evaluate frontier models (LLMs, speech models, agent frameworks) for production use
• Own VoIP routing, telephony integration, and the cloud infrastructure that the voice agent runs on
• Collaborate with design, mobile, and product teams to ship voice experiences that feel effortless to end users
• Serve as the voice AI domain expert on the team, raising the engineering bar through code reviews, architecture discussions, and mentorship
• Help the team ship features faster and with fewer bugs by setting the technical standard for the product
• Actively leverage AI tools in day-to-day engineering work
• Contribute across engineering teams beyond Call Guard as the business scales

What skills and experiences will help you?

• Strong software engineering fundamentals - production systems, distributed systems, real-time infrastructure
• Hands-on experience building voice or conversational AI products in production
• Proficiency with modern voice AI stacks: STT (Whisper, Deepgram, etc.), TTS (ElevenLabs, Cartesia, etc.), real-time orchestration (LiveKit, Pipecat, or similar)
• Deep familiarity with LLMs and agent frameworks (LangChain, LlamaIndex, LangGraph, or equivalents) in production environments
• Experience optimizing for sub-second end-to-end latency in real-time systems
• Proficiency in Python and/or Go, with a track record of building scalable backend systems
• Experience designing and deploying secure, production-grade APIs
• Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP) and containerized deployments
• Track record shipping consumer products at scale
• Active daily use of AI coding tools (Cursor, Claude, Codex) with strong prompt judgment and tool selection instincts

What's nice to have?

• Experience with telephony, VoIP, SIP, or carrier-level call routing
• Background in speech recognition, signal processing, or audio engineering
• Familiarity with adversarial ML, AI safety, or anti-fraud system design
• PII handling and sensitive data awareness
• Prior exposure to consumer privacy or security-focused products
• Experience with WebRTC or real-time media infrastructure

What do we like?

• Passion for security, privacy, and internet ethics
• Curiosity and constant learning at the frontier of voice AI and applied ML
• Strong analytical thinking with proactive problem-solving abilities
• Ownership mentality - comfortable holding the pen on technical direction
• Effective team player in high-velocity environments
• Comfortable mentoring and knowledge sharing across teams
• Experience in startups or growth-stage companies
• Interest in data tracking, analytics, and product instrumentation

What We Offer

Cloaked is a well-funded Series B startup based out of NYC.

Although we are a distributed team, the NYC team operates with a hybrid model. The office building is home to several amenities, including a gourmet cafe, cocktail bar, and a rooftop work area.

We have a fully built out kitchen packed with drinks and snacks. The Cloaked team has diverse interests and so we frequently embark on team outings and go out for socials!

Compensation and Benefits

We offer above market rate pay and equity based off of the market's best commercially available data. Your compensation will be a combination of salary, bonus and equity.

Cloaked employees have 401K, as well as top of the line Health, Dental, and Vision benefits.

We offer flexible work arrangements and the ability to work remotely as needed. Cloaked provides a home office stipend in addition to a new company laptop (and other tech depending on the role).

Perks

Competitive PTO: We encourage employees to take a minimum # of vacation per quarter. We see PTO as a preventative burnout measure and are committed to changing the industry standard.

Monthly health stipend: Used for any kind of physical, mental or emotional care you'd like to take for yourself, be it a gym membership, a meditation app, or time with a personal trainer.

Late Night Meals: We understand that sometimes work can get in the way of meal prep. In response to that, we offer employees a monthly meal stipend to be used when they don't have time to get a home cooked meal going!

Professional Growth: Opportunities for career development and personal growth are provided to all employees who seek to further their knowledge and capabilities through an unlimited professional development fund. Additionally team members are encouraged to regularly attend conferences and industry events.

We are really excited about having you join our mission-driven team and help us build the future of online privacy!