TECH Signal 509
CollectWise (YC F24) Is Hiring
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CollectWise, a YC F24 startup using AI voice agents to automate consumer debt collection, is hiring an AI Agent Engineer to build and scale its voice AI infrastructure.
Engineers joining this role will work on real-time voice systems that must balance low latency, compliance guardrails, and high-volume reliability, directly influencing collection performance and cost. The hire signals a move from early-stage experimentation to production-grade voice AI, reflecting growing demand for AI-driven conversational applications in regulated industries.
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The engineer will design and own the voice AI architecture in LiveKit, handling ASR, STT, TTS, turn-taking, state management, and reliability for millions of interactions.
Candidates need 2+ years in voice/conversational AI, 3+ years in backend/platform engineering, strong Node.js, AWS, and SQL skills, and experience shipping production systems in a startup environment.
The position offers a $200,000, $300,000 salary, 0.25%, 1% equity, is based in New York, and requires US work authorization, reflecting the company’s post-seed growth after reaching a $2 M annualized run rate.
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What elseif makes of it.
The hiring notice marks a transition from CollectWise’s initial prototype phase to a scaling effort aimed at increasing annualized revenue from $2 M to $10 M within a year. To support that growth, the company is investing in a dedicated voice AI engineering role that will build the underlying infrastructure for its autonomous agents. This shift means engineers will focus less on exploratory AI work and more on production-grade systems that must operate reliably at scale.
Adopting this role requires a specific blend of expertise: hands-on experience with voice orchestration platforms such as LiveKit, proficiency in real-time audio pipelines, and a solid backend foundation in Node.js, AWS, and SQL. The cost of meeting these requirements includes time spent learning or refining voice-specific skills, as well as the organizational overhead of integrating prompt engineering, testing frameworks, and compliance safeguards into the development lifecycle.
The position will stop being effective if the team lacks familiarity with voice-centric tooling (e.g., LiveKit, SIP trunking, telephony integrations) or cannot maintain the strict performance targets that have already shown AI agents outperforming human collectors by 2×. Additionally, the requirement for US work authorization limits the talent pool, potentially slowing hiring if suitable candidates with the needed voice AI background are not available domestically.
Successful implementation of the engineer’s work will enable CollectWise to handle millions of consumer interactions while preserving client-specific customizations during migrations from legacy voice systems. This capability is intended to improve key business metrics such as containment, conversion, liquidation rates, and customer satisfaction, thereby directly linking technical output to the startup’s revenue growth objectives.
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