Senior AI Engineer – Voice & Conversational AI

Tower Loan•Flowood, MS

About The Position

The Senior AI Engineer – Voice & Conversational AI designs, develops, and implements AI-powered voice solutions to improve customer engagement and operational efficiency at Tower Loan. The role advances the use of artificial intelligence in customer service, account servicing, payment reminders, and other business operations. It calls for an experienced software engineer with a strong background in conversational AI, real-time technologies, and secure, scalable solutions. The engineer leads technical development from concept through production, builds and integrates voice applications with enterprise systems and telecommunications infrastructure, and ensures that interactions are secure, reliable, auditable, and compliant with company policies and applicable legal and regulatory standards. The role also serves as a senior technical resource and provides guidance to other engineers.

Requirements

Strong software engineering skills and 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, including the ability to manage multiple priorities effectively.
Demonstrated experience developing and delivering production software systems.
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.

Nice To Haves

Experience developing AI-powered applications, particularly conversational AI or large language model solutions.
Experience with real-time voice technologies, streaming APIs, SIP, RTP, WebRTC, WebSocket, or enterprise telephony systems.
Experience with OpenAI Live/Realtime APIs and related AI development platforms.
Proficiency with C#, .NET, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, or similar programming languages.
Experience with SQL Server, Redis, Kafka, Docker, Kubernetes, REST APIs, Git, and CI/CD pipelines.
Familiarity with speech recognition, text-to-speech, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), AI evaluation frameworks, and AI safety controls.
Experience in consumer finance, lending, collections, banking, payment processing, telecommunications, or another regulated industry.

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.
Develop 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 for 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 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.