About Us
Canary Technologies is changing the game for hotels with modern software powered by Canary's hospitality-specific AI platform.
Canary is utilized by 20,000+ hoteliers in 100+ countries to equip hoteliers with the technology they need to work smarter and wow their guests. Major hotel brands such as Wyndham, Marriott, IHG, Four Seasons, Rosewood, and Best Western trust Canary to deliver results.
Canary was named a 2024 Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ company, a Most Innovative Company by Fast Company and a HotelTechReport Best Place to Work — and is backed by top Silicon Valley investors like Y Combinator, F-Prime, Brighton Park Capital and Insight Partners.
Join us in shaping the future of hospitality!
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.
Responsibilities
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
Qualifications
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
