Senior Software Engineer, Telephony

About LiveKit

LiveKit is building the infrastructure layer for the voice-driven era of computing. Founded in 2021, the platform gives developers everything they need to build, test, deploy, scale, and observe voice AI agents in production. LiveKit powers voice AI applications for OpenAI, xAI, Salesforce, Coursera, Spotify, and thousands of others, collectively facilitating billions of calls each year.

About This Role

Voice has connected people for over a century — and it's entering a new era. As a Senior Software Engineer, Telephony, you'll help reimagine how calls, media, and intelligence flow through modern networks. From SIP and RTP to AI-driven voice experiences, your work will directly impact how businesses and customers communicate across industries worth billions.

What You'll Do

• Design and operate telephony services that manage phone numbers, carrier integrations, and SIP trunks at scale

• Develop reliable signaling and media systems that bridge traditional telephony with WebRTC and AI pipelines

• Collaborate with carriers and vendors to expand number coverage, improve routing, and ensure regulatory compliance globally

• Partner across teams — SFU, Developer Success, Infrastructure, and SDK — to make voice features easily accessible to developers

• Monitor and optimize voice quality, latency, and reliability using observability and debugging tools

• Evolve APIs and contribute to modern, developer-friendly interfaces for telephony and media control

Who You Are

• A strong senior software engineer who thrives in complex, distributed systems — with hands-on experience in Go, C, or C++

• Deeply familiar with APIs, backend architecture, and large-scale real-time systems

• Strategic thinker who understands how infrastructure choices shape products, developer experience, and end-user impact

• Ideally experienced building developer platforms or communications products, with appreciation for reliability, latency, and usability nuances

• Hands-on, curious, and comfortable diving into protocols, packet captures, and network-level debugging

• Known as the go-to person for tackling tough technical problems and clearly explaining complex concepts

• Fast learner who frequently picks up new languages and tools, ships quickly, and obsesses with crafting fast, reliable, practical code

What We're Looking For

• Obsession with crafting code that is fast, reliable, and practical for the problem at hand

• Track record of building and shipping fast in production environments

• Clear communication of complex technical concepts to teammates and stakeholders

• Demonstrated expertise in telecommunications, VoIP, real-time communications, or similar infrastructure domains

The best way to impress us is with thoughtful Issues and/or PRs on our GitHub repos.

💰 Compensation not publicly listed. Market estimate for similar roles: from $120K, varying by experience and location.