About the role

  • Design, author, and maintain prompt chains, decision flows, and persona logic for voice agents
  • Integrate LLMs with speech, menu data, POS systems, and structured knowledge sources
  • Lead implementation of fallback logic, retry mechanisms, and safety filters
  • Fine-tune LLMs, ASR, and embedding models to optimize agent behavior and performance
  • Apply optimization techniques such as LoRA, quantization, distillation, and pruning
  • Collaborate with MLEs to measure and reduce latency, response failure, and hallucination rates
  • Define evaluation workflows and scalable agent experimentation pipelines
  • Mentor AI Engineers and Data Scientists on prompt strategy and model tuning
  • Work cross-functionally with PMs, MLEs, QA, and voice platform teams to align priorities
  • Deploy optimized LLM and ASR-based components and ensure responsiveness and quality of drive-thru AI experience
  • Work from Taco Bell offices in Irvine, CA with hybrid in-office requirement (1–2 days per week)
  • Occasional travel to test markets or partner locations may be required

Requirements

  • 5+ years experience in AI Engineering, ML Systems, or LLM-driven development
  • Deep experience with LLMs (e.g. OpenAI, Llama, Nemotron, Mistral) and prompt-based application design
  • Strong coding skills in Python
  • Experience with LangChain, vector stores, and API orchestration
  • Experience fine-tuning or adapting ASR, embedding, or LLM models in production
  • Familiarity with model optimization techniques (LoRA, quantization, distillation, pruning)
  • Experience measuring and reducing latency, response failure, and hallucination rates
  • Experience with real-time audio systems and multi-turn conversational agents (preferred)
  • Experience deploying LLM agents in customer-facing use cases (preferred)
  • Understanding of speech interfaces, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and evaluation metrics (preferred)
  • Mentoring or leadership experience working with AI Engineers and Data Scientists (implied)

Benefits

  • 4 weeks’ vacation PLUS holidays
  • Sick leave
  • 2 paid days to volunteer at the cause of their choice
  • Dollar-for-dollar matching gift program
  • Generous parental leave
  • Medical, dental, vision and life insurance
  • 6% 401k match
  • Bonus eligibility
  • Hybrid work model: in-office 1–2 days per week
  • Occasional travel to test markets or partner locations
  • Recognition culture
  • Opportunities for growth across Yum! brands

Job title

Manager, AI Engineering – Voice AI

Job type

Experience level

Mid levelSenior

Salary

$134,500 - $158,300 per year

Degree requirement

No Education Requirement

Tech skills

Location requirements

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