Slang AI is redefining customer engagement through conversational AI, making every interaction seamless and efficient. Our mission is to transform the restaurant industry by providing the ultimate voice AI solution for consistently outstanding customer experiences.

At Slang AI, we believe how we build matters just as much as what we build. We foster a culture rooted in hospitality, ownership, and clarity, where every “Slangsta” feels valued, supported, and connected to the broader impact of our work in the AI-powered future of restaurants.

What Your Experience Will Be You'll join Slang's Engineering team as a Software Engineer, contributing across our core product areas including telephony infrastructure, AI-powered conversation features, and application functionality. Your work will help restaurants automate customer interactions and improve service through natural conversation. You'll spend roughly 90% of your time developing backend services in Kotlin, with occasional contributions to React/TypeScript frontend features as needed. Your work will directly impact thousands of restaurant interactions daily, helping businesses streamline operations and deliver better customer experiences.

You'll report to the Engineering Manager, collaborating closely with product managers, conversation designers, and fellow engineers. The role requires attendance at key ceremonies including daily standups at 1:00 PM ET, bi-weekly cycle planning, and weekly Show & Tell sessions. As a software engineer, you'll use modern collaboration tools like Slack, GitHub, and video conferencing to stay connected with the team. Once ramped up, you'll have opportunities to mentor junior and other mid-level engineers through code reviews and pair programming sessions.

Why You Belong Here And How You Will Grow Our engineering culture emphasizes pragmatic solutions, continuous learning, and collaborative problem-solving. We believe in domain-driven design, comprehensive testing, and building systems that gracefully handle the complexities of real-world restaurant operations. You'll work alongside engineers who are passionate about creating reliable, scalable conversational experiences and who regularly share knowledge through Show & Tell sessions and detailed technical documentation.

As a software engineer, you'll gain exposure to cutting-edge conversational AI technologies, telephony systems at scale, and modern cloud-native architectures. You'll deepen your expertise in Kotlin and functional programming while working with production systems handling real-time voice interactions. The cross-functional nature of the role will accelerate your growth toward senior engineering roles. You'll learn from experienced engineers while contributing your own perspectives to architectural decisions and technical standards.

What Success Looks Like

Required Qualifications What you will bring:

• 3-5 years of professional software development experience, primarily in backend systems
• Strong proficiency in at least one JVM language (Kotlin, Java, or Scala) with understanding of functional programming concepts
• Experience building and consuming RESTful or GraphQL APIs

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Kotlin specifically and its idioms
• Familiarity with GraphQL schema design and implementation
• Experience with Google Cloud Platform services (Firestore, Cloud Functions, Pub/Sub)
• Knowledge of telephony systems (Twilio or similar) and webhook integrations
• Experience with conversational AI platforms (Dialogflow, Lex, or similar)
• Infrastructure as code experience with Terraform
• Understanding of event-driven architectures and distributed systems patterns

How Work Affects My Life This software engineering position offers the flexibility of remote/hybrid work with competitive hourly compensation commensurate with mid-level engineering market rates. You'll have the autonomy to structure your 40-hour work week while maintaining core collaboration hours with the team. The role provides an opportunity to work on meaningful technology that directly impacts small business owners and their customers, helping restaurants thrive through innovative conversational AI solutions.

Through this role, you'll gain valuable experience working with enterprise-grade systems and modern AI technologies, positioning you for future senior engineering opportunities. The exposure to production telephony systems, conversational AI, and scalable cloud architectures will expand your technical portfolio and worldview on how technology can transform traditional industries. You'll be part of building solutions that make restaurant operations more efficient and customer experiences more delightful, contributing to the digital transformation of the hospitality industry.

Deliverables This scope of work defines the responsibilities and deliverables for a software engineer supporting Slang's development. The engineer will focus primarily on implementing robust, scalable backend services in Kotlin while occasionally contributing to frontend features in TypeScript/React, all powering conversational solutions for full-service restaurants.

Software Development

• Design and implement backend services using Kotlin and the JVM ecosystem (primary focus)
• Develop GraphQL queries and mutations for client-server communication
• Contribute to React frontend components and features as needed
• Create modular, testable code following domain-driven design principles
• Implement proper error handling, logging, and graceful degradation patterns
• Write comprehensive unit and integration tests across the stack

Data Modeling and Storage

• Design and implement Firestore data models that optimize for performance and maintainability
• Create efficient data access patterns and queries
• Implement data migration scripts and schema evolution strategies
• Ensure data consistency and integrity across distributed systems
• Design GraphQL schemas that effectively represent domain models

Telephony and AI Integrations

• Develop and maintain integrations with Twilio for voice and messaging capabilities
• Implement Dialogflow conversational flows and webhook handlers
• Create fault-tolerant communication between telephony providers and internal services
• Handle edge cases and error scenarios in telephony workflows
• Implement retry logic and circuit breaker patterns for external service calls

Frontend Development (as needed)

• Implement React components using TypeScript
• Integrate frontend with GraphQL APIs
• Ensure responsive and accessible UI implementations
• Write unit tests for React components
• Collaborate with product team on user experience improvements

Cloud Services Integration

• Develop containerized applications using Docker
• Deploy and manage services on Google Cloud Platform
• Ensure services follow cloud-native best practices for scalability and resilience
• Integrate with GCP services (Cloud Functions, Pub/Sub, etc.) as required
• Provision new infrastructure using Terraform as needed under the guidance of platform engineering

Observability and Monitoring

• Implement comprehensive logging, metrics, and tracing
• Create dashboards and alerts for service health monitoring
• Develop diagnostic tools to aid in troubleshooting production issues
• Ensure all services provide actionable insights into their behavior and performance

Deliverables Code and Documentation

• Production-ready Kotlin backend code following established coding standards
• TypeScript/React frontend code when assigned frontend tasks
• GraphQL schema documentation and query examples
• Technical design documents for new features and architectural changes
• Contribute to code reviews for team members' pull requests and submit your code for code reviews

Testing and Quality Assurance

• Automated test suites with adequate code coverage for backend services
• Frontend component tests for any UI work delivered
• Integration tests for all external service dependencies
• Bug fixes and issue resolution within agreed SLAs

Collaboration and Communication Team Integration

• Participate in daily standups and bi-weekly cycle planning sessions
• Collaborate with Platform & Data pods on shared initiatives
• Provide technical input during architecture discussions
• Share knowledge and progress on work during weekly Show & Tell sessions
• After ramping up, mentor junior/mid-level engineers through code reviews and pair programming sessions

Stakeholder Communication

• Provide regular status updates on assigned tasks
• Communicate technical trade-offs and implementation options
• Document technical decisions and their rationale
• Participate in cross-functional meetings as needed

Technical Standards Code Quality

• Follow Kotlin idioms and best practices for backend development
• Use TypeScript effectively with proper type safety for frontend work
• Use dependency injection and maintain loose coupling
• Write self-documenting code with meaningful variable and function names
• Maintain consistent code formatting using agreed-upon linters

Timeline and Availability

• Expected commitment: 40 hours per week.
• Attendance at key meetings: daily standup (1:00 - 1:30 p.m. ET), cycle planning, retrospectives

Our Vision Calling a business shouldn’t feel like a robot-hostage situation, where you’re forced to listen to horrible music and can't reach a human, while enduring a soulless voice uttering "I'm sorry I didn't quite get that" on repeat for eternity. (shudder) That’s why we started Slang AI We use the latest AI and audio wizardry to make transacting via voice so enjoyable it’s more human than human. By 2030, we will save businesses and consumers 1 billion minutes of precious time while transforming voice channels into the preferred mode of communication (it's faster and easier than text).

We have backgrounds building product at companies like Spotify, Buzzfeed, the New York Times, and OpenTable —shipping experiences that have reached hundreds of millions of users. Now, we’re using our backgrounds to start a new culture, one that puts product and human-centered design above all else while fostering constant learning and growth. Sound like something you’d like to be part of? Get on board.

Our Values Overachiever Fever. We’re overachievers (we don’t know any other way)

Learner Fervor. We take every opportunity to learn (especially when it’s hard)

Humility Ability. We approach each other with curiosity and openness (know-it-alls not welcome!)

SMB MVP. We’re an expert member of our customers’ teams (we earn their trust)