Engineering Manager - Voice Agents

Engineering Manager - Voice Agents

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The Agentic Tribe is revolutionizing the chatbot and voice assistance landscape with Gen3, a cutting‑edge AI Agent system that pushes the boundaries of conversational AI. Gen3 is a goal‑oriented, dynamic, and truly conversational system capable of reasoning, planning, and adapting to user needs in real‑time. By leveraging a multi‑agent architecture and advanced language models, Gen3 delivers personalized, engaging user experiences, moving beyond scripted interactions to handle complex tasks and "off‑script" inquiries with ease.

What You Will Be Doing

• Lead a cross‑functional team, guiding them towards achieving their full potential.
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement and collaboration, driving innovation and continuously discovering and evaluating new technologies.
• Empower your team through coaching, mentorship, and skill development.
• Foster a culture of micro feedback, mutual accountability, shared ownership, and a bottom‑up culture in close collaboration with other Engineering Managers.
• Enable engineers to adopt best practices within their discipline, aiming for greater productivity, cleaner code, and product quality.
• Collaborate with fellow Engineering Managers and Chapter Leads to keep our engineering group focused and effective.
• Facilitate communication between Engineers, Product Managers, and stakeholders within R&D and across the business, fostering understanding and alignment.
• Take accountability for delivery and product quality within your team.

What You Bring To The Role

• Proven experience building and scaling voice‑based products with strong knowledge of speech‑to‑text, text‑to‑speech, and speech‑to‑speech systems.
• Enthusiastic mentor who inspires teams, fostering professional development and empowering teams to reach their full potential.
• Strong technical background and professional experience developing and maintaining complex architectures.
• Track record of successfully managing and motivating engineering teams, driving them towards ambitious goals.
• Experience scaling teams and leading engineering teams through change.
• Understanding of the value of diverse perspectives and actively seeking input from others for optimal outcomes.
• Excellent facilitation of discussions and clear communication with various stakeholders.
• Experience collaborating with teams, leveraging pair programming and code reviews to promote knowledge sharing and enhance performance.
• Strong expertise in iterative development and risk balancing.
• Commitment to quality and deep understanding of achieving and maintaining it within complex architectures and software designs.

Hybrid: This role offers a hybrid experience at the team level, providing a rich onsite experience with collaboration, learning, and celebration, while allowing flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. Attending the local office is required for part of the week; the specific in‑office schedule will be determined by the hiring manager.

Senior and Employment Details

Seniority level: Mid‑Senior level

Employment type: Full‑time

Job function: Engineering and Information Technology

Industry: Software Development

Location: Cologne, North Rhine‑Westphalia, Germany

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer. We are proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights, please click here.

Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre‑employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process, please send an e‑mail to with your specific accommodation request.

As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency, we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications for this position, in accordance with company guidelines and applicable law.