Sr. Software Engineer – Robot Applications & Voice AI

At Cerence, we are building the cognitive and application layer that combines Voice AI, Agentic AI, multimodal reasoning, and robotic capabilities into intuitive human-robot experiences.

Software Engineer drives the application and cognitive layer of our humanoid robot. Working directly with the core robotics platform designed by our Architect, you will turn human intent into high-level physical actions.

About Cerence

AI That Moves the World.

Careers That Move You Forward .

At Cerence AI, you’ll help transform advanced AI into trusted, real-world solutions that make complex technology – think vehicles, robots, smart manufacturing, and emerging intelligent devices – more natural, reliable, and useful.

Building on decades of innovation and global deployment in automotive, we are extending our expertise into new products, markets, and intelligent systems.

As part of our global team, you’ll work alongside leading innovators, researchers, engineers, and business leaders to solve meaningful challenges and turn breakthrough ideas into technology people use every day.

You’ll have the opportunity to make a visible impact, help shape Cerence AI’s next chapter, and move your own career forward. -------------------------------------------------------------- Sr.

Proven at global scale in automotive, Cerence provides the trusted interaction and action layer connecting people, machines, and intelligent systems.

Its AI platform enables natural interaction and dependable action across complex real-world environments where reliability, safety, security, and performance are critical.

Working with customers and partners worldwide, Cerence transforms advanced AI into trusted solutions that bridge the gap between AI potential and real-world performance.

For more information, visit www.cerence.ai .

Responsibilities

• Robot Applications & Voice AI Location : California Bay area Humanoid robots become truly useful when they understand human intent and convert it into meaningful action.
• Role Overview The Sr.
• This role focuses on building advanced voice applications, multi-modal context systems, and programming the core business logic and behavior trees that make the robot interactive, helpful, and intuitive.
• Build software powering the next generation of intelligent humanoid robots.
• Work on Voice AI, Agentic AI, LLMs, VLMs, and Physical AI products.
• Collaborate with experts in robotics, conversational AI, embedded systems, and cloud computing.
• See your work deployed in real-world robotic environments.
• Application Layer & Business Logic: Implement high-level application software, interaction workflows, and robotic behavioral state machines.
• Build the core logic that translates human speech, gestures, environmental cues, and contextual information into deterministic robotic tasks.
• Integrate vision pipelines, object detection, scene understanding, spatial tracking, and voice interactions to provide contextual awareness.
• Develop robust voice applications managing STT, NLU, dialog management, wake-word detection, and TTS interfaces.
• Build orchestration workflows combining LLMs, VLMs, memory systems, tool calling, reasoning engines, and robotic capabilities.
• Consume and orchestrate navigation, manipulation, perception, and device-control services exposed by the robotics platform.
• Optimize applications to balance low-latency local execution with cloud-based AI services.
• Integrate robots with mobile devices, smart home ecosystems, enterprise applications, and cloud APIs.
• Build telemetry, logging, and evaluation mechanisms supporting continuous model improvement.
• Contribute to testing, observability, CI/CD, and production deployment practices.
• Experience integrating cloud AI services, model serving platforms, and containerized deployments.
• Automated testing, debugging, monitoring, observability, and CI/CD practices.
• Experience building software for humanoids, service robots, warehouse automation, or embodied AI systems.
• Telemetry, analytics, evaluation systems, retraining pipelines, and AI feedback loops.
• Docker, Kubernetes, OTA updates, and edge deployment environments.

Requirements

• Skills & Experience Mandatory (Must Have) Orchestration & Logic Frameworks: Strong proficiency in BehaviorTree.CPP, state machines, workflow orchestration engines, or task-planning architectures.
• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience using Python and/or C++.
• Experience designing scalable application-layer software, API-driven systems, distributed services, and event-driven architectures.
• Experience optimizing software on resource-constrained edge hardware under intermittent connectivity conditions.
• ROS2 application nodes, Services, Actions, Topics, navigation and manipulation APIs.
• & Qualifications Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Software Engineering, AI, or a related discipline.
• CRNC) helps people and intelligent systems work together naturally and reliably.

Preferred

• Hands-on experience building applications using LLMs, VLMs, tool-calling architectures, agent frameworks, RAG systems, or semantic memory platforms.
• Experience designing natural, context-aware human-machine experiences.
• (Highly Valued Plus) Voice & Speech Stack: Cerence, Whisper, Deepgram, Azure Speech, ElevenLabs, AWS Speech Services, STT/TTS/NLU platforms.
• Object detection, scene understanding, visual grounding, and spatial reasoning systems.
• Beamforming, Acoustic Echo Cancellation (AEC), microphone arrays, and noise suppression.
• Help shape the future of human-machine interaction.

Pay

• It is not typical for offers to be made at or near the top of the range.
• The actual salary will be determined based on experience and other job-related factors.
• Annual bonus opportunity

Benefits

• Comfortable owning solutions from concept through deployment in a fast-moving environment.
• Why Join the Team Build software powering the next generation of intelligent humanoid robots.
• Work across Voice AI, Agentic AI, Physical AI, and Conversational Systems.
• Collaborate with experts in speech, AI, robotics, cloud, and embedded systems.
• We offer a generous compensation and benefits package (in addition to the base salary), including: Salary range $107,000 - $172,000 USD.
• Insurance coverage (medical, dental, vision, life, and disability) Paid time off Paid holidays
• Company contribution to the 401(k) plan
• Equity awards for certain positions and levels
• Remote and/or hybrid work available depending on the position

All compensation and benefits are subject to the terms and conditions of the underlying plans or programs, as applicable, and may be amended, terminated, or replaced from time to time.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

Cerence is firmly committed to Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and to compliance with all federal, state and local laws that prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of age, race, color, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sex, sex stereotyping, pregnancy, national origin, ancestry, religion, physical or mental disability, medical condition, marital status, citizenship status, sexual orientation, protected military or veteran status, genetic information and other protected classifications. Cerence Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement. All prospective and current Employees need to remain vigilant when it comes to executing security policies in the workplace.

This includes

Following workplace security protocols and training programs to familiarize with the ways to maintain a safe workplace. - Following security procedures to report any suspicious activity. - Having respect for corporate security procedures to allow those procedures to be effective. - Adhering to company's compliance and regulations. - Encouraging to follow a zero tolerance for workplace violence. - Basic knowledge of information security and data privacy requirements (e.g., how to protect data & how to be handling this data). - Demonstrative knowledge of information security through internal training programs.