Agent Experience Designer, Agentic Voice
A16Z GAMES · San Ramon, CA · Yesterday
Information Technology$147k–$186k/yrFull-time
About the role
As an Agent Experience Designer — Agentic Voice, you’ll own the voices, personalities, and interactions that make an AI agent feel intuitive, empathetic, and human. You’ll collaborate with AI engineers to shape model judgment through prompts and flow orchestration, rather than hard-coded branches. You’ll also help create a centralized persona system, voice standards, and the universal quality bar that forward-deployed VX designers will apply account-by-account in the field.
Responsibilities
- Own the agent's global voice, character, and personality, maintaining personal consistency across every vertical we ship.
- Own the standard handoff patterns and design systems, ensuring seamless transitions where context is fully preserved when an agent passes a caller to a human.
- Own the universal platform quality bar, defining and measuring Consistency, Fluency, and Latency (CFL) and tying personal decisions directly to core metrics like resolution, containment, and sentiment.
- Make the voice palette and establish house standards for pacing, prosody, and emphasis that forward-deployed teams will use to build brand-specific experiences.
- Partner with AI engineers to orchestrate behavior, escalation instincts, confirmation patterns, and graceful recovery workflows using advanced prompting rather than rigid dialogue trees.
- Research and design for distinct behavioral and emotional user states, ensuring the agent adapts seamlessly whether interacting with a patient disputing a bill or a dispatcher tracing a late delivery.
Requirements
- Experience: 5+ years of dedicated experience shaping voice user interfaces (VUI), character writing, conversation design, or complex conversational/agentic systems.
- Bachelor's degree in Linguistics, Communication, Psychology, Design, or equivalent practical experience.
- Demonstrated experience shaping voice user interfaces (VUI), character writing, or complex conversational/agentic systems.
- Fluency with LLM-based agent behaviors, prompt engineering, and prompt orchestration (knowing how design choices alter model outputs without relying on code).
- Fluency with Text-to-Speech (TTS) controls, including voice selection, SSML tuning, pacing, and emphasis to set broad platform standards.
- An exceptional portfolio that highlights voice systems, written persona standards, and interactive logic rather than just static flow diagrams.
- Experience in regulated, high-stakes verticals (e.g., healthcare, financial services, legal) is a strong plus.
- Strong taste and an ear for dialogue—the ability to articulate a character on a page and translate it into consistent AI behavior under pressure.
Qualifications
- Experience: 5+ years of dedicated experience shaping voice user interfaces (VUI), character writing, conversation design, or complex conversational/agentic systems.
- Bachelor's degree in Linguistics, Communication, Psychology, Design, or equivalent practical experience.
- Demonstrated experience shaping voice user interfaces (VUI), character writing, or complex conversational/agentic systems.
- Fluency with LLM-based agent behaviors, prompt engineering, and prompt orchestration (knowing how design choices alter model outputs without relying on code).
- Fluency with Text-to-Speech (TTS) controls, including voice selection, SSML tuning, pacing, and emphasis to set broad platform standards.
- An exceptional portfolio that highlights voice systems, written persona standards, and interactive logic rather than just static flow diagrams.
- Experience in regulated, high-stakes verticals (e.g., healthcare, financial services, legal) is a strong plus.
- Strong taste and an ear for dialogue—the ability to articulate a character on a page and translate it into consistent AI behavior under pressure.
Skills
- Experience: 5+ years of dedicated experience shaping voice user interfaces (VUI), character writing, conversation design, or complex conversational/agentic systems.
- Bachelor's degree in Linguistics, Communication, Psychology, Design, or equivalent practical experience.
- Demonstrated experience shaping voice user interfaces (VUI), character writing, or complex conversational/agentic systems.
- Fluency with LLM-based agent behaviors, prompt engineering, and prompt orchestration (knowing how design choices alter model outputs without relying on code).
- Fluency with Text-to-Speech (TTS) controls, including voice selection, SSML tuning, pacing, and emphasis to set broad platform standards.
- An exceptional portfolio that highlights voice systems, written persona standards, and interactive logic rather than just static flow diagrams.
- Experience in regulated, high-stakes verticals (e.g., healthcare, financial services, legal) is a strong plus.
- Strong taste and an ear for dialogue—the ability to articulate a character on a page and translate it into consistent AI behavior under pressure.
Benefits
This position has the opportunity to be based in our San Ramon, US office.
Pay
The target base salary range for this position is $147,000 - $186,000 USD.
Schedule
Your role is based in San Ramon, US.