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Mandarin-speaking: Software Engineer (Contract)
AI in this role
ABOUT RETELL AI
Retell AI is using first-principles thinking to reimagine the call center with cutting-edge voice AI. Thousands of companies now use Retell's AI voice agents to handle sales, support, and logistics calls that once required large teams of human agents. Backed by Y Combinator, Alt Capital, and other leading investors, we've scaled to $80M in ARR with a team of 50, up from $5M at the start of 2025, and are now valued at over $1.5B.
Our vision for 2026 is to build a modern CX platform where entire contact centers are powered by AI. Instead of basic automation that needs constant human tuning, we're creating intelligent AI “workers” that act as frontline agents, QA analysts, and managers, continuously executing, monitoring, and improving every customer interaction.
We're growing fast and looking for ambitious builders who want to tackle hard technical problems, move quickly, and have a real impact on one of the fastest-growing voice AI companies in the world.
Let's build the future together.
Recent recognition:
No. 1 Best Places to Work in the Bay Area, San Francisco Business Times 2026
#3 Fastest-Growing Software Company, G2 Best Software Awards 2026
ABOUT THE ROLE
We're hiring a Mandarin-Speaking Software Engineer on a long-term 1099 contract to help enterprise customers successfully deploy and scale AI voice agents in production.
You'll work directly with customers to build AI voice agents, design integrations, troubleshoot deployments, and solve technical problems. The role sits at the intersection of software engineering, customer success, and AI deployment.
You'll work closely with Engineering, Product, and Customer Success while partnering directly with customer technical teams.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
Enterprise Customer Deployments
Support technical onboarding and deployment for enterprise customers.
Help customers launch and scale AI voice agents.
Build trusted relationships with customer engineering teams.
Technical Consulting
Build AI voice agents alongside customers.
Design conversation flows and deployment strategies.
Debug APIs, webhooks, SIP, telephony, authentication, integrations, and latency issues.
Troubleshoot production deployments and technical issues.
Work directly in customer codebases when needed.
Partner with Product & Engineering
Identify product gaps through customer feedback.
Translate customer needs into actionable product improvements.
Work closely with Product and Engineering teams.
Customer Growth
Help customers launch new AI use cases.
Identify opportunities to expand product adoption.
Become a trusted technical partner to enterprise customers.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
Must Have
Must be able to read, write, and speak in Mandarin and English.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field.
2-8 years of professional software engineering experience, with a strong backend focus (e.g., building and maintaining services, APIs, and data pipelines in production). Prior Solutions Engineering, Forward Deployed Engineering, or Customer Success Engineering experience is a plus, but a software engineering foundation is required.
Strong backend fundamentals: you can write clean, working code on your own (Python, Node.js, or similar), design and integrate REST/webhook APIs, work with databases, and reason about system design, authentication, and error handling.
Able to pass a hands-on backend technical assessment (live coding or take-home) without relying on AI tools. We expect you to use AI to move faster, but you must understand and be able to explain, debug, and fix the code yourself.
Proven ability to debug complex issues across systems by reading logs, tracing requests, and isolating root causes in customer integrations.
Excellent communication skills: you can explain technical concepts clearly to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders, and work directly with customers to scope and build solutions with them.
Must be available to work some overlapping hours with our Pacific Time-based team and customers.
Nice to Have
Experience with AI, LLMs, or Voice AI.
Startup experience.
Enterprise customer experience.
Willingness to travel occasionally for customer launches or onsite work.
YOU MIGHT THRIVE IF
You enjoy solving technical problems directly with customers.
You like building alongside customers rather than just supporting them.
You're comfortable debugging complex systems.
You move quickly and enjoy a fast-paced startup environment.
You enjoy working across Engineering, Product, and Customer Success.
JOB DETAILS
Employment Type: Full-Time 1099 Contractor
Location: Remote
Compensation: $5,250 USD/Month, based on experience
Hours: Must be open to working some overlapping hours with our Pacific Time team and customers.
How we rate this
Mandarin-speaking: Software Engineer (Contract) at Retell AI rates 74 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Works on AI (AI Level 3 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Works on AI. The daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Also common in software engineer jobs at this level
Questions you could be asked
- What have you built with speech recognition or text-to-speech, and where did it break?
- Describe a typical day in a role like this one: which parts run through AI directly?
- If you removed AI from this role, what would be left, and how do you decide what still needs a human?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: Speech. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
- Show where AI is part of your daily process, not a one-off project. This role expects it to be a running habit.
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