Senior AI Engineer – Voice & Conversational AI
Company: Conovo Ltd Location: [Solihull / Birmingham], UK (Hybrid) or Remote (UK-based) Contract: Permanent, full-time Reports to: Founder & Solutions Architect
About Conovo
Conovo builds practical AI products that solve real problems for real businesses. Our products include DeskCaller, a live AI voice agent that answers calls, captures leads and books jobs for home-services trades, and a private, on-premise AI smart speaker for environments such as hospitality and healthcare, where data must stay on site. We also deliver AI and solutions-architecture work for clients in the UK and US.
We’re a small, hands-on team that ships fast, and we’re looking for a Senior AI Engineer to take a leading role in building and scaling our AI products.
The role
You’ll own the AI layer across our products, from real-time voice pipelines in the cloud to open-source models running locally on our own hardware. You’ll make the key technical calls on models, architecture and infrastructure, and turn working prototypes into reliable products that customers depend on every day.
What you’ll do
- Design and build real-time voice AI pipelines (speech-to-text, LLM reasoning, text-to-speech) with low latency and natural turn-taking
- Develop AI agents that handle live phone calls, qualify leads, book appointments and integrate with business systems such as CRMs and calendars
- Deploy and optimise open-source LLMs and speech models on-premise and on edge hardware, balancing quality, speed and cost
- Work on wake-word detection, voice activity detection and offline-first conversational experiences for the smart speaker
- Integrate AI products with third-party platforms, including telephony providers, CRMs, property management systems and IoT devices
- Build evaluation and monitoring frameworks to measure call quality, accuracy and reliability in production
- Ensure our products meet UK GDPR, data privacy and telecoms compliance requirements (including Ofcom/PECR)
- Contribute to product direction, architecture decisions and, as the team grows, mentor other engineers
What we’re looking for
Essential
- 5+ years in software engineering, including at least 2 years building and shipping LLM or ML systems in production
- Strong Python skills, with experience in PyTorch, Hugging Face or similar
- Hands-on experience with LLM APIs (e.g. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) and open-source models (e.g. Llama, Mistral, Qwen)
- Experience building conversational or agentic systems, including tool calling, RAG and prompt engineering
- Experience deploying on cloud platforms (AWS, Azure or GCP) with Docker and CI/CD
- Pragmatic, product-minded approach: you care about what users experience, not just the model
Nice to have
- Real-time voice AI experience: STT/TTS (e.g. Whisper, Deepgram, ElevenLabs), streaming audio, or platforms such as Twilio, LiveKit, Vapi or Pipecat
- Running models locally or at the edge: quantisation, llama.cpp, Ollama, vLLM, or embedded hardware (e.g. NVIDIA Jetson, Raspberry Pi)
- Wake-word or keyword-spotting experience
- IoT, smart-home or hospitality/healthcare integration experience
- Startup experience and comfort working with ambiguity
What we offer
- [25] days’ holiday plus bank holidays
- Company pension scheme
- Flexible hybrid or remote working
- Real ownership: your work goes straight into products used by customers
- Learning budget, conference attendance and the latest AI tooling
- [Share options / performance bonus, if offered]
How to apply
Send your CV and a short note about a voice or AI system you’ve built and shipped.
Conovo Ltd is an equal opportunities employer and welcomes applicants from all backgrounds. We’re happy to make reasonable adjustments at any stage of the process. [Applicants must have the right to work in the UK.] or [Visa sponsorship may be available for the right candidate.]
Pay: £40,420.00-£55,135.24 per year
Work Location: Hybrid remote in Solihull B90
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