Cresta unlocks the true potential of the customer experience, turning every conversation into a competitive advantage. Cresta’s unified AI platform combines conversational AI agents, real-time human agent augmentation, and comprehensive conversation intelligence to drive revenue and efficiency gains across every channel. The world’s leading companies, including United Airlines, Cox Communications, and Marriott, use Cresta to power world-class customer experiences every day.
Born from the Stanford AI Lab, Cresta has raised more than $270 million from the world’s leading investors, including a16z, Greylock, and Sequoia. Cresta’s leadership includes some of the leading minds in AI today. Our CEO, Ping Wu, founded and led Google's Contact Center AI and Vertex AI platforms before joining Cresta to build the future of AI-driven customer experiences.
Over the next few years, AI is going to redefine how people all over the world interact with businesses every day. Come build that future at Cresta.
About the role:
Cresta Labs is a small, high-ownership team focused on exploring and building the next generation of AI-native product experiences.
The team works at the intersection of product engineering, applied AI, user research, and design. We move quickly from customer problems to prototypes, validate ideas with real users, and help turn the strongest concepts into scalable product experiences.
You will work across the full product development loop: identifying user needs, designing product concepts, building working prototypes, evaluating quality, and partnering with product and engineering teams to bring the best ideas into production.
This is a hands-on builder role for someone who enjoys ambiguity, cares deeply about product quality, and wants to shape how AI agents are built and improved in real world enterprise environments.
What You'll Do :
- Build zero-to-one AI product experiences from early concept through prototype, validation, and productionization.
- Work with users, product managers, designers, researchers, engineers, and customer-facing teams to identify high-impact opportunities.
- Translate ambiguous customer needs and product ideas into clear workflows, interfaces, and technical designs.
- Build and improve AI agent development, testing, evaluation, monitoring, and optimization workflows.
- Use product data, user feedback, and evaluation results to understand what is working and what needs to improve.
- Create clear demos, product notes, technical docs, and recommendations that help teams align and move faster.
- Help define the product and technical bar for AI-native experiences at Cresta.
What We're Looking For:
- 5+ years as a software/ML engineer on user-facing systems with strong full-stack engineering skills.
- Experience building and shipping products or major features with significant end-to-end ownership.
- Hands-on experience with LLMs, AI agents, AI workflows or applied ML products.
- Strong product judgment and the ability to simplify complex technical ideas into intuitive user experiences.
- Comfort working in ambiguous problem spaces where the right answer is not yet obvious.
- Ability to move quickly from idea to prototype while maintaining strong engineering rigor.
- Strong communication skills, especially when explaining technical concepts to cross-functional audiences.
Bonus Points:
- Experience designing and building evaluation and testing frameworks for machine learning systems
- A practical approach to validation, including user research, instrumentation, metrics, and evaluation.
- Previous experience in a startup or fast-paced product environment
Note on Our Hiring Process:
We highly value your time and engineering craftsmanship. To ensure a streamlined and objective process, the first step for qualified applicants following an initial resume review is a self-paced CoderPad technical assessment. This allows you to showcase your practical coding and problem-solving skills in a real-world environment before moving into conversational interview rounds.
Perks & Benefits:
We offer a comprehensive and people-first benefits package to support you at work and in life:
- Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with plans to fit you and your family
- Flexible PTO to take the time you need, when you need it
- Paid parental leave for all new parents welcoming a new child
- Retirement savings plan to help you plan for the future
- Remote work setup budget to help you create a productive home office
- Monthly wellness and communication stipend to keep you connected and balanced
- In-office meal program and commuter benefits provided for onsite employees
Compensation at Cresta:
Cresta’s approach to compensation is simple: recognize impact, reward excellence, and invest in our people. We offer competitive, location-based pay that reflects the market and what each individual brings to the table.
The posted base salary range represents what we expect to pay for this role in a given location. Final offers are shaped by factors like experience, skills, education, and geography. In addition to base pay, total compensation includes equity and a comprehensive benefits package for you and your family.
Base Salary Range: $185,000–$235,000 + Annual Bonus & Offers Equity
We have noticed a rise in recruiting impersonations across the industry, where scammers attempt to access candidates' personal and financial information through fake interviews and offers. All Cresta recruiting email communications will always come from the @cresta.ai domain. Any outreach claiming to be from Cresta via other sources should be ignored. If you are uncertain whether you have been contacted by an official Cresta employee, reach out to recruiting@cresta.ai