Staff Product Manager, Telephony

Job description

ABOUT LIVEKIT LiveKit is building the infrastructure layer for the voice-driven era of computing. Our platform gives developers everything they need to build, test, deploy, scale, and observe agents in production. Founded in 2021, LiveKit powers voice AI applications for OpenAI, xAI, Salesforce, Coursera, Spotify, and thousands of others, collectively facilitating billions of calls each year. ABOUT THIS ROLE We're looking for the first Product Manager for LiveKit Telephony: how AI agents utilize the global phone network. Landlines, mobile networks, and enterprise phone systems already connect nearly every person and business on earth. Making an agent a first-class participant on that network is what turns voice AI from a demo into something that picks up a real phone number and does real work. Our PM team is small and high-leverage, with each PM coming in to establish the foundations in a new area of the business. Telephony is essential to many of the highest-value voice AI use cases running today: call centers, customer support, healthcare triage, outbound sales, appointment scheduling. A large share of our growth comes from enterprises putting agents on the phone at massive volume, and every one of those calls runs through this product. You'll shape the direction and roadmap for Telephony alongside the engineering leaders who build it, across both sides of the product. On one side is SIP trunking, where enterprises bring the carriers and phone systems they already have and everything has to interoperate, stay up, and sound good. On the other is LiveKit Phone Numbers, our native offering, where we own the carrier relationships and hand a developer a working number in a couple of clicks. Going native lets us control the whole path a call takes, which means fewer hops, better audio, and quality we can actually tune. We intend to offer the fastest and best sounding connection an agent can get, anywhere in the world, and you'll decide how quickly we get there and how far the footprint reaches. This role can be based remotely or in our SF HQ, where you'll be part of a collaborative in-office culture! YOU'LL THRIVE HERE IF YOU: - are obsessed with making the best product for our customers - are known as the go-to person for tackling tough problems - work hard and can build and ship fast - are focused on polish, detail, and quality - are a fast learner, frequently picking up new tips, tricks, and skills The best way to impress us is by trying LiveKit's product, understanding the space, and bringing smart thoughts and opinions to the table. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Own the telephony roadmap. Build a clear point of view on where the product is going, and decide what gets built and when, in partnership with engineering. - Meet enterprises where they are. SIP has as many interpretations as there are vendors. Decide what compatibility we take on, and when, so connecting an existing carrier, PBX, or contact center platform is straightforward instead of a project. - Take native telephony global. Extend LiveKit Phone Numbers well beyond its US starting point, with the country coverage and regulatory footing to make buying a number from us the obvious choice. - Get deep with customers and data. Understand how teams actually run phone-based agents in production, from the first trunk they configure to the calls that go wrong, and let that shape priorities. - Own the economics. Telephony is already a meaningful business with real carrier costs behind it. Own pricing, packaging, and margin as volume grows and our footprint expands. WHO YOU ARE - 8+ years in product management, at a senior or staff level, with substantial experience managing a developer-facing products in particular. - Technical depth. You can reason about protocols, media paths, latency, call quality, and failure modes, and earn the trust of strong engineers. You don't need to write code, but you need to understand systems well enough to make good tradeoffs. - Reliability instincts. You've owned a product where uptime and quality were the core of the job, and you're comfortable in a domain where failure is immediate and obvious to a person on the other end of a live call. - Cross-functional influence. You influence through clarity, trust, and good judgment, not process or hierarchy. - Customer obsessed. You form deep connection with customer needs, and translate that into the prioritized roadmap with the engineering team. You ensure everything we ship is polished, focused, and solves real problems for customers. - Communication as a superpower. You write clearly, present well, and can move between a board-level strategy conversation and a detailed technical discussion with an engineering lead. - Comfort with ambiguity. We're a small product team at a fast-growing company. You'll figure out what matters, prioritize ruthlessly, and move quickly without perfect information. NICE TO HAVE - Built a telephony, CPaaS, SIP, or voice communications product that customers ran production call volume on - Familiarity with SIP, RTP/SRTP, DTMF, voice codecs, and call transfer - Experience working with carriers: interconnects, number provisioning and porting, and telecom regulation and compliance - Background at a developer tools, infrastructure, or communications company - Familiarity with voice AI, real-time communication, or contact center platforms - Experience with usage-based pricing models and cost or margin optimization OUR COMMITMENT TO YOU - An opportunity to build something truly impactful to the world - Contribute to open source alongside world-class engineers - Competitive salary and equity package - Health, dental, and vision benefits - Flexible vacation policy LiveKit is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of any characteristic protected by applicable law. If you require a reasonable accommodation during the application or interview process, please contact recruiting@livekit.io.