Senior Telephony Engineer

Job description

About Sutherland Artificial Intelligence. Automation.Cloud engineering. Advanced analytics.For business leaders, these are key factors of success. For us, they’re our core expertise. We work with iconic brands worldwide. We bring them a unique value proposition through market-leading technology and business process excellence. We’ve created over 200 unique inventions under several patents across AI and other critical technologies. Leveraging our advanced products and platforms, we drive digital transformation, optimize critical business operations, reinvent experiences, and pioneer new solutions, all provided through a seamless “as a service” model. For each company, we provide new keys for their businesses, the people they work with, and the customers they serve. We tailor proven and rapid formulas, to fit their unique DNA.We bring together human expertise and artificial intelligence to develop digital chemistry. This unlocks new possibilities, transformative outcomes and enduring relationships. Sutherland Unlocking digital performance. Delivering measurable results.   We are looking for a Senior Telephony Engineer to design, build, and operate enterprise-grade voice infrastructure — bridging traditional telephony with modern AI-powered real-time voice systems. You will work at the intersection of SIP/VoIP networking, cloud communications platforms, and AI voice agent development, enabling seamless caller experiences through intelligent automation. This role requires both deep protocol-level expertise and hands-on software development capability, with a strong emphasis on building production-ready SIP gateways and integrating real-time conversational AI services. Key Responsibilities SIP & Telephony Infrastructure • Design, configure, and maintain SIP trunks, dial plans, and call routing across multi-platform environments. • Build and operate SIP gateways — including custom media handling, audio transcoding (e.g., μ-law/G.711 to PCM16), and call state management. • Configure and manage Session Border Controllers (SBCs) for enterprise-grade SIP peering, security, and interoperability. • Implement SIP signaling stacks (e.g., pjsua2/pjproject or equivalent) for programmatic call handling and custom media port implementations. • Ensure high availability, redundancy, and failover across voice infrastructure. • Monitor and troubleshoot SIP signaling, RTP streams, and voice quality issues (jitter, packet loss, codec mismatches). Cloud Voice & AI Integration • Integrate telephony platforms with cloud-based real-time voice AI services (e.g., Azure Voice Live API, AWS Connect, or equivalent) via WebSocket-based media streaming. • Build and maintain SIP-to-AI gateway architectures that bridge PSTN/SIP callers to speech-to-speech AI pipelines with low-latency audio delivery. • Implement asynchronous, high-concurrency audio stream bridges to handle parallel voice sessions at scale. • Integrate with Azure AI Foundry, Azure Communication Services (ACS), or equivalent platforms for PSTN, SIP transfer, IVR/DTMF routing, and number provisioning. • Deploy and tune AI-powered voice bots and virtual agents, working with ASR, TTS, and end-of-turn detection configurations. • Leverage cloud platform services (AWS or Azure) for infrastructure provisioning, container deployment, and voice workload scaling. CTI & System Integrations • Integrate voice platforms with enterprise systems (CRM, WFM, ticketing) via REST/SOAP APIs and webhook-driven event architectures. • Implement Data Actions, OAuth 2.0 authentication, and secure API integrations across telephony and AI platforms. • Collaborate with AI/ML teams on LLM-backed virtual agent design, function calling, and tool orchestration within voice flows. • Configure inbound/outbound call flows, ACD queues, skills-based routing, and IVR self-service trees. Development & DevOps • Write production-grade code in Python, JavaScript, Java, or C# for SIP gateway logic, audio processing, and integration middleware. • Work with SQL and database systems for call data storage, reporting, and analytics. • Follow Git-based version control, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform or equivalent) practices for deployments. • Implement structured logging, observability, and alerting for real-time voice system health monitoring. Governance & Documentation • Produce detailed technical documentation: call flow designs, SIP ladder diagrams, integration runbooks, and API references. • Enforce enterprise security standards including TLS for SIP signaling, SRTP for media, and network segmentation. • Collaborate with network engineers to optimize QoS, bandwidth allocation, and voice traffic prioritization. Required • Bachelor's degree in Telecommunications, Computer Science, or a related field. • 5+ years of enterprise telephony experience with SIP, VoIP, RTP, and related protocols. • Hands-on experience with SBC configuration and SIP peering (Audiocodes, Oracle, Ribbon, or equivalent). • Experience with PBX/media server platforms such as Asterisk, FreeSWITCH, or equivalent open-source stacks. • Working knowledge of audio codecs (G.711 μ-law/a-law, G.722, Opus) and real-time audio transcoding. • Proficiency in at least one programming language: Python, JavaScript, Java, or C#. • Experience integrating telephony with cloud platforms — AWS (Connect, Chime SDK) or Microsoft Azure (ACS, Voice Live, AI Foundry). • Familiarity with WebSocket-based real-time streaming protocols for media and API communication. • Ha