Distinguished Speech Scientist, ASAPP

$250-320k

Salary information is for applicants based in Colorado, New York City only

Senior and Expert level

San Francisco Bay Area

Office located in Mountain View, CA

AI agents for enterprise contact centers

Job no longer available

AI agents for enterprise contact centers

201-500 employees

B2BArtificial IntelligenceCustomer serviceSaaSAutomationCloud Computing

Job no longer available

$250-320k

Salary information is for applicants based in Colorado, New York City only

Senior and Expert level

San Francisco Bay Area

Office located in Mountain View, CA

201-500 employees

B2BArtificial IntelligenceCustomer serviceSaaSAutomationCloud Computing

Company mission

To solve the toughest challenges in customer services with AI.

Job

Company

Role

Who you are

M.S. or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or Electrical Engineering
8+ years of experience in industry, academia, and/or non-profit research organizations preferred
Proven record of strategic research leadership, including the ability to drive research programs and partnerships with stakeholders
Exceptional written and verbal communication skills to scientific, patient, and lay audiences

Desirable

Strong hands-on engineering skill with experience of writing production-level code
Ability to thrive in an entrepreneurial, fast-paced, solution-oriented, and highly-collaborative environment

What the job involves

Drive research innovations to deliver state-of-the-art speech recognition for contact centers
Develop strategic partnerships with NLP research leaders to jointly optimize speech and NLP systems
Lead speech research collaborations, coach junior researchers, and demonstrate R&D principles

Our take

With around 70% of purchases driven by customer experience, call centers are an important part of many large companies' sales operations. But call centers have a problem retaining skilled agents, with high pressure and workloads leading to a turnover rate more than double other workforces. ASAPP is aiming to fix that by providing AI tools to support call center agents by reducing their data entry and reporting workload.

ASAPP is by no means alone in this space, with other startups such as Lang, Gong and Cogito entering the AI call-center market along with growing interest from giants such as Amazon and Google. But it's early start (ASAPP was founded in 2014) and focus on development of its NLP models gives it an edge that it seems set to retain, with a client base consisting of enterprise companies such as JetBlue, EY and American Airlines.

In 2024, ASAPP continued to lead the way in generative AI for contact centers, with the launch of its GenerativeAgent product, redefining customer service by automating 99% of interactions and boosting efficiency and satisfaction. With strong partnerships and a history of success, ASAPP is ready for even more growth.

Kirsty

Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle

Insights

Led by a woman

Top investors

7% employee growth in 12 months

Glassdoor (3.3)

Company

Funding (last 2 of 3 rounds)

May 2021

$120m

SERIES C

May 2020

$185m

SERIES B

Total funding: $380m

Company HQ

World Trade Center, New York, NY

Leadership

Priya Vijayarajendran

(CEO)

Priya joined ASAPP in 2022 as CTO, moving into the role of President of Technology in 2023, Interim CEO in 2024 and CEO in 2025. Prior to ASAPP, she spent 3 years at Microsoft as a VP of Data & AI and 2 years at IBM as CTO/VP of Applied AI.

Jo-Anne Sinclair

(CLO)

Prior to joining ASAPP in 2016, Jo-Anne was an Attorney at Sereno Legal Service and an SVP of Legal at Nuance Communications. She was also on the General Counsel at ScanSoft for 5 years and Caere Corporation for 2 years.

Nirmal Mukhi

(Chief Architect)

Nirmal joined ASAPP in 2021 as a Director of Machine Learning Infrastructure. Since then, he has held a number of roles and moved into the role of Chief Architect in 2025. Previously, he served as the CTO at TRANSFR and spent 19 years at IBM, joining as a Software Engineer before becoming a Solutions Portfolio Manager, Development Manager of IBM Watson Education, and Development Leader of Watson Education Platform.

Salary benchmarks

We don't have enough data yet to provide salary benchmarks for this role.

Submit your salary to help other candidates with crowdsourced salary estimates.

Share this job

View 5 more jobs at ASAPP