Agent Experience Designer, Agentic Voice

About the role

You will define the personalities, vocal standards, and interaction models that make our AI agents feel human and capable. This role focuses on the design of voice experiences that prioritize resolving customer issues over simple deflection. You will report to the VP of AI Products and collaborate with engineering to set the quality bar for all agentic voice interactions. You own the end-to-end voice experience, ensuring that design decisions directly support customer resolution and business outcomes. You will establish guardrails that keep AI agent behavior aligned with brand values and regulatory expectations. Your work will bridge the gap between creative character design and technical implementation in a high-stakes production environment. You will continuously iterate on voice standards based on empirical performance data and user feedback. Ultimately, you shape how the world perceives and trusts Dialpad's AI-driven voice interactions.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Establish and maintain a global voice, character, and persona for AI agents across all product verticals.
• Create house standards for prosody, pacing, and emphasis to guide Speech engineering and field teams.
• Define platform quality metrics, including fluency, consistency, and perceived latency, while linking design choices to resolution and sentiment outcomes.
• Partner with AI engineers to use advanced prompting for orchestrating escalation, recovery, and confirmation patterns instead of static dialogue trees.
• Design handoff experiences that preserve full context when transitioning a caller to a human.
• Develop behavioral designs that allow agents to adapt to various emotional states, from routine tasks to high-stakes interactions.
• Conduct detailed audit of existing voice flows to identify gaps in clarity, empathy, and resolution alignment.
• Translate complex product requirements into structured conversation maps and persona briefs for cross-functional teams.
• Define error handling strategies that reduce friction and maintain trust during misunderstood inputs or system failures.
• Collaborate with data teams to validate design hypotheses using interaction logs and sentiment analysis.
• Establish naming conventions and documentation standards for voice assets to ensure long-term maintainability.
• Lead workshops with product managers and engineers to align on voice strategy and interaction patterns.
• Evaluate third-party TTS providers and provide input on feature capabilities for future roadmap decisions.
• Mentor junior designers on best practices for voice-first thinking and agentic behavior design.
• Ensure all voice outputs comply with accessibility guidelines and inclusive communication principles.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in conversation design, character writing, or developing complex voice user interfaces and agentic systems.
• Bachelor degree in Psychology, Communication, Linguistics, Design, or equivalent practical experience.
• Proficiency in LLM-based agent behaviors and prompt orchestration to influence model output without coding.
• Working knowledge of TTS controls, such as prosodic settings and voice selection.
• An exceptional portfolio demonstrating interactive logic, written persona standards, and voice system design.
• Ability to articulate character traits and translate them into consistent AI behavior.
• Strong understanding of conversational turn-taking, repair mechanisms, and dialogue state management.
• Willingness to work within structured frameworks and adhere to established design standards.

Nice to have

• Professional background in high-stakes or regulated industries like legal, financial services, or healthcare.

Practical notes

• This is a standards and craft-focused role within the product organization. Candidates interested in building production speech models should apply for the AI Engineer, Speech Synthesis (TTS) role instead.
• Compensation listed reflects base salary only and excludes equity, bonuses, and benefits.
• Full-time position located in San Ramon, United States.
• Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship for this role.
• Travel is not required for this position.
• This role is not eligible for visa sponsorship.
• The listed salary range applies to candidates based in California.
• New start dates are coordinated with team availability and onboarding schedules.