Senior Software Engineer

About Hiya

At Hiya, we’re making business calls more trusted, useful, and effective.

Voice remains one of the most important ways businesses communicate with their customers, but the value of a call depends on trust. When customers do not recognize who is calling or why, important conversations are missed, customer relationships suffer, and business outcomes are harder to achieve.

Hiya helps businesses create trusted calling experiences that benefit both sides of the conversation: enterprises can reach customers with confidence, and customers can answer with confidence. Our products support branded business calling, trusted caller identity, call performance insights, customer engagement, and voice security capabilities that help businesses strengthen relationships and improve outcomes.

This role sits in a core business area for Hiya and is focused on helping SMB and enterprise customers succeed.

About the Role

This role is part of a foundational team working at the intersection of backend systems, real-time voice infrastructure, and applied AI. You won't be maintaining legacy code or tweaking existing services—you'll be designing and building the backend platform from the ground up.

We're looking for engineers who get excited about greenfield architecture, who want to make early decisions that shape how a product scales, and who thrive when there's more whiteboard than runbook. As a Senior Backend Software Engineer, you'll design and build the backend services and APIs that power Hiya's next-generation voice products. This is a backend-first role with opportunities to work across the stack when it adds value.

Our team builds the platform at the intersection of voice, telephony, and artificial intelligence. Our work spans both audio intelligence (e.g., deepfake detection, speaker verification) and conversational AI, focused on building resilient, scalable systems that integrate into operator networks and enable our platform to perform in real-time telephony integrations.

What You'll Do

Design and build backend services and APIs from scratch using TypeScript / Node.js

Build real-time voice systems: SIP/RTP media handling and STT/TTS pipelines with strict latency requirements

Make foundational architecture decisions that will shape the platform for years to come

Build systems that operate in real-time, high-availability voice environments

Work with data stores and event streams, and manage deployments using Docker and Kubernetes (AWS)

Collaborate with a distributed team (Seattle and Europe) with async-first norms

This is a hybrid role with 3 days per week in office in Seattle and some travel required on an as-needed basis

What Success Looks Like

4+ years of professional experience as a backend or backend-leaning full-stack engineer

Strong fundamentals in backend architecture, API design, and data-driven systems

Experience working with cloud infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines

Comfort with ambiguity—you know how to make good decisions without a playbook

Interest in applied AI, voice technology, or telephony (direct experience a plus, not required)

Excellent communication and self-organization skills

What We're Looking For

Required:

3+ years of professional software engineering experience

Strong depth in TypeScript or Python ; demonstrated ability to work meaningfully in other languages

Experience with Node.js backend development and modern web service patterns (REST APIs, async processing, event-driven systems)

Familiarity with DevOps basics : containers (Docker), deployment workflows, and reading infrastructure configs (Terraform, Helm, or similar)

Ability to work across Android or iOS code — you don't need to be a mobile specialist, but you can navigate a Kotlin or Swift codebase and make focused changes

Strong written and verbal communication — you write clear tickets, clear PRs, and proactively flag blockers rather than going quiet

Pragmatic judgment — you make sensible tradeoffs between speed and perfection and can explain why

Autonomous on well-scoped work — once you understand the goal, you drive to completion without needing hand-holding

Honest about what you don't know — you ask good questions early rather than disappearing and surfacing problems late

Reliable throughput — you ship consistently and follow through on commitments

Active use of AI tooling — you leverage AI-assisted coding as a force multiplier and have a point of view on where it creates real leverage in this kind of work

Preferred:

Experience with VoIP or telephony (SIP, RTP, WebRTC) or interest in learning it

Carrier or B2B platform context

Experience with Databricks, Kafka , or streaming data pipelines

Familiarity with AWS (DynamoDB, S3, Kinesis, EKS)

How We Work

Hiya is not a passive environment. We expect people to take ownership, form opinions, and engage directly with hard problems.

We work with a high degree of transparency and autonomy . Context is shared openly, and decisions are discussed, challenged, and then made. Once a call is made, we commit and move forward.

You’ll be expected to work through ambiguity, weigh tradeoffs, and take responsibility for results—while keeping a high bar for quality and customer trust.

Every team member at Hiya is expected to live our core values:

Serve, our customers and partners by holding a high bar for trust and quality

Own, share in success and open up to failures

Lead, listen, show up with a point of view but commit entirely once a decision has been made

Improve, even if it means changing course or contradicting ourselves

Do, rather than observe

Our Interview Process

At Hiya, our interview process is designed to evaluate candidates through real, experience-based work . We focus on understanding how you think, exercise judgment, use leverage (including AI), and collaborate, rather than how well you perform in traditional interviews.

Process Overview

Our standard interview process follows this sequence:

Initial Screen: We confirm baseline alignment, role interest, relevant experience, and logistics.

Hiring Manager (HM) Screen: We evaluate role fit, expectations, and execution readiness.

Onsite Interview Loop: Each interviewer focuses on specific competencies, evaluating how you make decisions, navigate tradeoffs, and collaborate in real time

Live Working Assignment You’ll then participate in a live, role-relevant working session as part of an interview loop with multiple interviewers. This experience is designed to reflect how work is done at Hiya and focuses on your real-time problem-solving and collaboration skills.

During the session, you’ll work through a problem live and walk interviewers through your thinking as you go. Interviewers will explore how you structure problems, communicate your reasoning, respond to questions and feedback, and adapt your approach in the moment. .

Future Hiya Value Interview: An independent conversation focused on your long-term potential, judgment under ambiguity, and ability to create sustained value as scope and complexity increase.

Reference Check: As a final step, we connect with 2–3 past supervisors to gain additional perspective on your experience and working style, and to further understand how you align with Hiya’s values.

How We Invest in You

Compensation & Ownership

Base Salary: $113,000-$197,000

Compensation is determined by role scope, skills, experience, location, and market data.

Equity Compensation: ownership aligned with your impact and the company’s growth

Benefits & Support

Employer-sponsored Insurance

Medical, dental, and vision (PPO & HDHP); 50% dependent coverage

Health, flexible spending, and dependent care accounts

Life, AD&D, and accident coverage, with company-paid life and long-term disability

401(k) with 3% company match (via Fidelity)

Flexible vacation policy and paid company holidays

Paid parental leav