No Japanese Required Lead Backend Engineer AI Speech

Role Summary

As a Backend Engineer (Tech Lead), you will serve as a technical leader within the Speech division of our Solution Architect team.
You will be responsible for defining the technical strategy, designing the architecture, leading multiple projects, mentoring engineers, and engaging in advanced technical discussions with clients.
You will play a central role in driving the success of our AI Speech solutions both technically and organizationally.

Why You’ll Love This Role

  Lead the Technical Strategy:
Play a key role in defining the technical direction and architecture for cutting-edge speech AI solutions, influencing the future of our organization.

  Cutting-edge AI Development:
Lead the design and development of next-generation speech dialogue systems integrating ASR, TTS, and LLM technologies.

  Solve Complex, High-Impact Problems:
Work directly on large-scale enterprise projects to solve real-world challenges through technology.

  Social Impact:
Contribute to solutions that enhance enterprise productivity—such as call center automation and sales enablement—creating tangible value for businesses.

  Leadership and Mentorship:
Guide and develop engineers, support hiring activities, and foster technical excellence across the team.

  Wide Technical Exposure:
Gain deep experience across domains such as real-time speech processing, CTI integration, cloud infrastructure, and machine learning operations.

  High Autonomy & Agility:
Experience the speed and decision-making flexibility unique to a startup environment.

Responsibilities

Technical Strategy & Architecture Design

• Define and execute the technical roadmap for the Speech domain
• Design architectures for large-scale, high-availability, and low-latency systems
• Make key decisions on technologies (languages, frameworks, infrastructure, tools)
• Identify and address technical debt and drive continuous improvement
• Develop strategies for security, performance, and cost optimization

AI Speech Solution Development

• Lead design and development of custom client solutions using “JAPAN AI Speech”
• Architect real-time speech processing systems (ASR, TTS, dialogue)
• Build low-latency streaming platforms using WebRTC, Twilio, or SIP
• Design and implement LLM-powered conversational systems

System Integration & API Design

• Design large-scale API integrations with existing CRM/CTI/business systems
• Architect and implement microservices-based distributed systems
• Standardize REST/gRPC/GraphQL API design best practices
• Build event-driven architectures for scalability and responsiveness

Infrastructure & Operations

• Design and optimize containerized Kubernetes environments on GCP
• Manage database architecture and query optimization (Postgres, Redis, Elasticsearch)
• Operate streaming and batch data pipelines (Kafka, Pub/Sub, etc.)
• Build and enhance CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, ArgoCD)
• Design observability systems (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, Jaeger)
• Drive SRE best practices (SLA/SLI design and reliability improvement)

AI & ML Integration

• Plan and execute production integration of ASR/TTS models
• Optimize inference performance (Triton, TorchServe, ONNX)
• Design and maintain MLOps pipelines
• Collaborate with ML and Data Science teams on applied AI initiatives

Team Leadership

• Mentor and guide engineers technically and professionally
• Conduct code and design reviews to maintain high-quality standards
• Participate in hiring and technical interviews
• Improve development processes, standards, and documentation
• Share technical knowledge through internal sessions and written materials

Client Engagement & Project Leadership

• Lead technical discussions, requirements definition, and solution proposals
• Design and execute PoC (Proof of Concept) for large-scale projects
• Provide technical direction and progress management across projects
• Ensure post-deployment maintenance, scalability, and compliance with security standards

Work Style

Hybrid work model: 3 days in the office, 2 days remote.

Minimum Qualifications

•   Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent experience) in Computer Science, Software Engineering, AI, Machine Learning, Mathematics, or a related field

    5+ years of experience developing applications in Python

    3+ years as a System Architect or Technical Lead

    Strong hands-on experience with real-time communication (WebRTC, WebSocket, gRPC) or streaming systems (Kafka, Pub/Sub)

    Proven track record designing architectures for large-scale, highly available, and cost-efficient systems

    5+ years of experience with cloud services (GCP preferred; AWS/Azure acceptable) and container technologies (Docker, Kubernetes)

    Experience designing and operating RDB/NoSQL systems (Postgres, Redis) and object storage (GCS/S3)

    Experience mentoring engineers and providing technical leadership

    Experience in technical client communication, requirement definition, and custom solution delivery

    Experience working in a startup or fast-growing environment

    Strong knowledge and passion for AI-related technologies

Preferred Qualifications

•   Deep experience or research background in ASR, TTS, or speech signal processing

    Production experience with model inference platforms (Triton, TorchServe, ONNX Runtime, TensorRT)

    Experience with CTI integration (Twilio, SIP, Asterisk)

    Experience operating large-scale data warehouses (BigQuery, Redshift, Snowflake) or data lakes

    Experience designing or implementing LLM- or RAG-based dialogue systems

    MLOps architecture and implementation experience

    Experience with NLP or ML-based systems development

    Hands-on experience with machine learning using Python, TensorFlow, or PyTorch

    Experience developing chatbots, speech recognition, or AI agent systems

    Full-stack experience (TypeScript/React)

    Experience launching new products or services from 0→1 phase

    Bilingual proficiency (Japanese/English)