Senior Member of Technical Staff, Voice
Role Overview
This senior role involves owning the entire voice AI infrastructure, including architecture, implementation, scaling, and continuous improvement, to handle thousands of concurrent calls with sub-second latency. You'll build and enhance systems for outbound lead qualification, inbound customer service, and operations, working in a growing engineering team to transition from low-code platforms to custom infrastructure. The impact includes powering real revenue and serving thousands of customers through a core system that drives sales, operations, and customer service.
Perks & Benefits
The job is remote with a salary range of $170,000 to $275,000 and equity of 0.10% to 0.50%, though the location is specified as San Francisco in-office, implying potential hybrid or relocation expectations. The culture is championship-minded, emphasizing fast-paced collaboration, craft, and pushing each other, with career growth through high-agency ownership and exposure to cutting-edge AI systems. The process includes a founder call and on-site Super Day, suggesting a focus on mission alignment and technical excellence in a dynamic startup environment.
Full Job Description
Senior Member of Technical Staff, Voice
Harper is an AI-native commercial insurance company in San Francisco. We're not bolting AI onto insurance — we're rebuilding the entire business as software, on a simple bet: turning expert human judgment into compute is one of the largest transitions left to make, and a trillion-dollar industry still run 90% by hand is the place to prove it. We've grown ~100x in the last year and we move at that speed — on-site, in person, long days, very high standards. Almost no one joins Harper for insurance; they join to build the company that replaces how it works.
The role
Insurance runs on phone calls — businesses call brokers, brokers call underwriters, millions of calls a day, most of them repetitive, most of them spent on hold. Voice is where trust gets built and where deals get closed, which also makes it the hardest part of the business to turn into compute. Getting voice right is exactly what separates an AI demo from AI that operates — Giga (DoorDash) and HappyRobot (DHL, Ryder) are proving voice can run core operations at enterprise scale, and we're building the same for insurance. You'll own Harper's entire voice AI infrastructure: architecture, implementation, scaling, continuous improvement. Voice isn't a feature here; it's a core system powering sales, operations, and service. We have working voice agents today — and we're at roughly 1% of where this needs to go. Your job is the other 99%: from hundreds of calls to thousands, from functional to exceptional.
What you'll do
Build outbound at scale. Lead-qualification agents calling thousands of prospects a day.
Run inbound service. 24/7 agents handling policy questions, certificate requests, claims.
Ship ops and underwriting voice. 20–30 minute insurance applications completed over the phone.
Build the platform. Move to custom infrastructure; sub-700ms latency; 10,000+ concurrent calls.
Design for compounding. Every conversation becomes structured decision traces the rest of the system learns from.
What we're looking for
3–6 years building software, with production voice AI behind you at real volume (not demos).
You know both fast deployment (VAPI, Retell) and custom infrastructure (Pipecat, LiveKit), and you understand telephony (SIP, RTP, WebRTC).
You've hit sub-second latency in production and know how you got there.
Deep knowledge of real-time systems and latency optimization.
You write code with AI (Cursor, Claude Code).
Bonus: telephony background (SIP/RTP); hands-on with specific platforms (VAPI, Retell, Pipecat, LiveKit); prior startup experience.
The reality
On-site in San Francisco, in person, long days, high standards. Voice is the highest-leverage and hardest problem in our stack, which means you own a core system end-to-end and the bar is real — sub-700ms or it doesn't ship. The people who want this want exactly that pressure and ownership.
Logistics
Compensation: $170,000–$275,000 base + performance bonus + equity.
Location: San Francisco, in-office. Based here or willing to relocate.
Benefits: Uber commuter benefits; breakfast, lunch, and dinner provided; snacks and coffee stocked; free gym membership; health, dental, and vision.
Process: 15-min founder call → Super Day on-site (technical phone screen first if you're outside SF).
To apply: Voice is the highest-leverage problem in our stack. If that's the challenge you want — send your resume and links to voice systems you've built.
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