CO-FOUNDER: VOICE AI ENGINEER

ABOUT USbCatalyst Labs is building an end-to-end Voice AI platform for the BFSI domain. Our platform enables financial institutions to build, deploy, manage, monitor, and test AI-powered conversational voice agents that handle customer support, KYC verification, loan processing, fraud detection, and claims processing at scale.We are at an exciting inflection point — we’ve validated the market need, have early customers interested, and now we are assembling the technical founding team to scale this vision.We are seeking an exceptionally talented Voice AI Engineer / Architect to join us as Co-Founder and lead our technical development. Location: Chennai, India (Remote-friendly for the right co-founder).WHO WE ARE LOOKING FORThe Ideal Candidate - You are a Voice AI engineer or architect who has:Built and deployed AI voice agents end-to-end, or have deep exposure to the entire voice AI pipeline (ASR → NLU/Intent Recognition → Dialogue Management → TTS)Shipped voice AI products in production that handle real user interactions at scaleHands-on experience with the full stack of voice technology: speech recognition, natural language understanding, dialogue systems, text-to-speech, and voice biometricsWorked in the BFSI/Financial Services domain (banking, insurance, lending) — OR strong desire to quickly master financial services compliance and use casesProven ability to make architectural decisions about voice AI platforms, including technology stack choices, performance optimization, and production deploymentEntrepreneurial mindset — you’ve either founded a startup before, or you are deeply eager to build and scale something from the ground upYour Experience Includes:Proficiency in Python, Django, PostgresExperience with ASR engines NLU/NLP frameworksLLM integrationTTS systemsVoice infrastructureML/AI frameworksDatabase and architecture design for ML/AI systemsExperience with MLOps, model deployment, and monitoringFamiliarity with real-time audio processing and streaming pipelinesYour Personality:You are obsessed with solving hard technical problems and love tinkering with AI/ML systemsYou move fast — you are comfortable with ambiguity and can iterate quicklyYou are user-centric — you understand that technology should solve real business problemsYou are collaborative — you want to build with co-founders who are equally passionateYou own your work — from technical architecture to deployment and monitoringYou are mission-driven — excited about automating financial services and improving accessibilityWHAT YOU'LL DOYour First 30 Days:Deeply understand our vision, product roadmap, and launch customer expectationsEvaluate and finalize our tech stack for building the voice AI platformHelp architect the core platform: voice pipeline, model training, deployment infrastructureSet up development environments and CI/CD for rapid iterationFirst 3-6 Months:Lead technical architecture of our end-to-end voice AI platformBuild core components: ASR integration, NLU engine, dialogue management system, TTS synthesis, voice biometricsIntegrate with BFSI systems: APIs for core banking systems, CRM platforms, KYC workflowsOptimize for production: Handle low-latency requirements, high concurrency, multi-language support, regulatory complianceBuild internal tooling: Model training pipelines, A/B testing frameworks, monitoring and analytics dashboardsEstablish best practices: Code quality standards, testing, security, data governanceLong-Term:Scale the platform to handle thousands of concurrent calls and millions of transactionsLead a growing engineering team as we hire additional engineersContribute to product strategy — your technical insights will shape what we buildPartner with customers to understand their needs and iterate on featuresExplore emerging voice AI technologies — voice emotion detection, advanced voice biometrics, multimodal interactionsWHAT MAKES THIS ROLE DIFFERENTYou are not joining as an employee — you are building this company with us.Co-founder equity: Meaningful equity stake with appropriate vestingTechnical leadership: You own the technical vision and architecture decisionsDay-to-day autonomy: You decide how to build the platform, within agreed-upon parametersReal market impact: We are solving a genuine problem in BFSI with strong product-market fit signalsLearning from the best: We have advisors and investors from the AI / Fintech ecosystem who will help you growMove fast: No enterprise red tape — we iterate on weeks, not quartersNICE-TO-HAVES (But Not Required) Understanding of BFSI compliance requirements (KYC, AML, PCI-DSS, data governance)Experience with Indian market and regional languages (Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, etc.)Open-source contributions to speech recognition or NLP projectsPublished research or technical blogs on voice AI or conversational systemsPrevious startup founding experienceWHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR IN YOUR BACKGROUNDYou’ve shipped at least one of these:A production voice agent handling real customer interactions (sales, support, surveys, banking)A conversational AI platform with multi-turn dialogue capabilitiesA speech recognition or NLP system with high accuracy requirementsAn AI application where you owned end-to-end system design and deploymentOR you’ve deep-dived into voice AI as part of a larger team and want to lead now.We care less about years of experience and more about POTENTIAL - Can you architect complex AI systems? - Do you understand the full voice pipeline? - Can you make trade-off decisions between speed, accuracy, and cost? - Do you have a track record of shipping and iterating?WHY NOW? WHY THIS? WHY US? Market Timing: BFSI institutions are actively investing in customer experience automation. Voice AI is becoming a competitive necessity.Technology Readiness: LLMs, multimodal models, and open-source voice tech have matured to the point where building production voice AI is now feasible.Opportunity: The BFSI + Voice AI opportunity is huge. Early movers have massive opportunity. The Founding Team has deep connects within the BFSI domain to seize this opportunity. To confirm that you have the attention to detail skills that we believe are essential – please include the following on the file name when you send or attach your resume - bclabs.Problem We are Solving: Banks and insurers today either use legacy IVR systems or pay huge amounts to AI agencies. We are building software that lets them own and control their voice AI.A FEW REAL TALKING POINTS Early-stage means: You’ll wear many hats (architecture, some DevOps, customer conversations). You are not only coding, you are building a company.Equity is real: For the right candidate, we will be providing meaningful equity. We are currently bootstrapped and planning to raise our first round by Q3 2026.The market is real: We have early customers ready to pilot. You are not betting on hypothetical demand.You should know: We are also hiring a Co-founder for Go-to-Market / Sales who will be primarily focusing on sales, GTM strategy, and fundraising to guarantee our success.Our 2-Year Goal: In 24 months, we want to be known as the best-in-class Voice AI platform for BFSI in India, and expanding globally.WHAT HAPPENS NEXTWe are looking to close on a Co-founder within the next 2-4 weeks. This is urgent but not rushed — we want to get it right.If you are interested, apply through LinkedIn. We’d love to chat about what you’ve built, what excites you about voice AI, and whether this mission aligns with where you want to spend the next 3-5 years of your career.Please include the following details in your profile:Your background in voice AI (projects shipped, links to GitHub/demos, technical details)Why you are interested in this problemWhat you’d want to build in voice AI if there were no constraintsYour availability (immediate, 2-4 weeks, etc.) We will then have a technical conversation with you where we dive into:Your voice AI architecture philosophyHow you’d approach building our platformYour experience shipping systems at scaleYour vision for where voice AI is headed We’ll move fast — we want to get to “yes” or “no” quickly and respectfully. If you have what we are looking for and you want to be part of the AI revolution, reach out to us.