Principal Software Engineer – Robot Applications & Voice AI

Cerence AI in the San Francisco Bay Area offers a remote-friendly Principal Software Engineer role focused on the application and cognitive layers of its humanoid robot platform. In this position you will shape advanced voice applications, multi-modal context systems, and core robot behavior logic that translate human intent into actionable tasks. The salary range for this role is USD 165,550 to 264,450 per year, and candidates should hold a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree with at least five years of professional software engineering experience.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement upper-layer software, interaction workflows, and the robot's behavioral state machines.
• Develop the central orchestration that converts spoken language, gestures, environmental cues, and contextual signals into deterministic robotic tasks.
• Fuse multi-modal inputs by integrating vision pipelines, object detection, scene understanding, spatial tracking, and voice interactions for contextual awareness.
• Create robust voice applications handling speech-to-text, natural language understanding, dialog management, wake-word detection, and text-to-speech interfaces.
• Build orchestration workflows that combine LLMs, VLMs, memory systems, tool calling, reasoning engines, and robotic capabilities.
• Consume and coordinate navigation, manipulation, perception, and device-control services exposed by the robotics platform.
• Optimize software for low-latency edge execution while leveraging cloud-based AI services as needed.
• Integrate robots with mobile devices, smart home ecosystems, enterprise applications, and cloud APIs.
• Contribute telemetry, logging, and evaluation mechanisms to support continuous model improvement.
• Support testing, observability, CI/CD practices, and production deployment readiness.

Requirements

• Experience with orchestration and logic frameworks such as BehaviorTree.CPP, state machines, workflow engines, or task-planning architectures.
• Hands-on work with cognitive AI and agent systems, including LLMs, VLMs, tool-calling architectures, agent frameworks, RAG systems, or semantic memory platforms.
• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience using Python and/or C++.
• Proven ability to design scalable application-layer software, API-driven systems, distributed services, and event-driven architectures.
• Experience optimizing software on resource-constrained edge hardware with intermittent connectivity.
• Experience integrating cloud AI services, model serving platforms, and containerized deployments.
• Commitment to automated testing, debugging, monitoring, observability, and CI/CD practices.
• Experience designing natural, context-aware human-machine interactions.
• Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree.

Technologies

• BehaviorTree.CPP
• Python
• C++
• ROS2
• Docker
• Kubernetes
• OTA updates
• Whisper
• Deepgram
• Azure Speech
• ElevenLabs
• AWS Speech Services

Benefits

• Annual bonus opportunity
• Health insurance
• Dental insurance
• Vision insurance
• Disability insurance
• Life insurance
• Health savings account
• Paid time off
• Paid holidays
• Company contribution to the RRSP
• Equity awards for certain positions and levels
• Remote and/or hybrid work available depending on the position
• 401(k)
• Parental leave

Your Impact

You will build software that powers the next generation of intelligent humanoid robots, concentrating on Voice AI, Agentic AI, LLMs, VLMs, and physical AI products. Collaboration spans robotics, conversational AI, embedded systems, and cloud computing, with your work deployed in real-world robotic environments.

Why Join the Team

• Build software powering the next generation of intelligent humanoid robots.
• Engage across Voice AI, Agentic AI, Physical AI, and Conversational Systems.
• Collaborate with experts in speech, AI, robotics, cloud, and embedded systems.
• Help shape the future of human-machine interaction.