Senior Software Engineer (CVI)

Department: Engineering, Product, & Design

Location: San Francisco, Remote

Compensation: $160K – $250K • Offers Equity

Employment Type: FullTime

About Us

Tavus is a research lab pioneering human computing. We’re building AI Humans: a new interface that closes the gap between people and machines, free from the friction of today’s systems. Our real-time human simulation models let machines see, hear, respond, and even look real—enabling meaningful, face-to-face conversations. AI Humans combine the emotional intelligence of humans with the reach and reliability of machines, making them capable, trusted agents available 24/7, in every language, on our terms.

Imagine a therapist anyone can afford. A personal trainer that adapts to your schedule. A fleet of medical assistants that can give every patient the attention they need. With Tavus, individuals, enterprises, and developers can all build AI Humans to connect, understand, and act with empathy at scale.

We’re a Series B company backed by world-class investors including Sequoia Capital, Y Combinator, and Scale Venture Partners.

Be part of shaping a future where humans and machines truly understand each other.

The Role

We're hiring a Senior Software Engineer (CVI) to be a technical driver on the Tavus Conversational Video Interface product. This is a very hands-on role focused primarily on our multimodal real time conversational product.

This isn't your first rodeo - you've tackled ambiguous problems head on, you have strong opinions about architecture and interface design, and you know how to ship polished, reliable software. You'll work closely with product, and engineering leadership to build the future of human-computer interfaces, fast.

This role is ambiguous and you bring a swiss army knife of experience to cut through the ambiguity. Here are a few examples of features this role has shipped:

• Multilingual support - which allows the replica to speak in multiple different languages within a single conversation

• RAG and Memories - which lets the replica pull context from document stores and past conversations

• Utterance to Utterance Optimization - shaving hundreds of milliseconds off utterance turns

• IPC Standardization - centralizing the interface for inter process communication throughout the codebase

Your Mission 🚀

• Jump into our existing CVI codebase and own the development and delivery of new features (ex: Voice localization for accent support, improve sentence endpointing for conversational smoothness, all features related to naturalness optimization)

• Help shape the future for how users interact with our SoTA models by partnering closely with our Research team to integrate real time models into CVI

• Contribute across the full product stack as needed, including dipping into research

• Work with the team to nail reliability and uptime

Requirements

• You are fluent in Python and have loads of experience with IPC, multiprocessing, and async frameworks. Low level concepts are dear friends

• You're comfortable out of your normal comfort zone and are willing to learn on the fly

• You thrives in an ambiguous and fast changing space. The state of the art changes on a dime and you react fast

• You bring a senior mindset: you set direction, owns decisions, and get things over the finish line.

• You communicate the complex with incredible clarity and leverage your communication abilities to teach others

Bonus if you have:

• Deep experience with video streaming over WebRTC

• Deep experience working with LLMs and agentic frameworks

• Extensive experience with low level systems

Benefits & Culture

When you join Tavus, you’re joining a diverse and supportive team. Our work is driven by our people, and our success is shared by all. This position has a flexible work schedule, unlimited PTO, competitive healthcare, and gear stipends, as well as plenty of fun. At the end of the day, we want Tavus to be a place for you to learn, directly drive impact, and work with a team you love.

To learn more about our team culture and benefits, check out our hiring page.

Tavus is growing fast, and we’d like you to grow with us. If you’re excited to get your hands dirty and help make machines more human, drop your resume and we’ll be in touch.

We are not looking for cultural fits, we are looking for culture creators. Diversity is what drives our success – it’s at the core of how we hire, communicate, and work. We are inclusive to all and combine our diverse backgrounds, skill sets, and perspectives to build the best experiences for our clients.