Java backend and full-stack engineers. A contact centre routes millions of calls and chats to the right agent, records them and reports on them, and Java engineers build these engines at the cloud contact-centre platforms. They are the most common opening here, more so than at most product companies, and many roles are full-stack, so the postings require React alongside Java and Spring Boot, on AWS and Kubernetes. They are hired almost entirely with experience.

GenAI engineers. Customer service is where language models found their first large job. GenAI engineers build the agents that answer customers by chat and voice, the assistants that suggest a reply to a human agent, and the models that summarise a call and score it. They work at the contact-centre platforms, the conversation-intelligence companies, Level AI, Uniphore and Observe.AI, and the young companies that sell AI agents for service, like Neuron7.ai and GigaML. The postings require Python with the OpenAI API and LangChain, and a notable share require speech processing, because much of this work starts with a voice. The role is well above its usual weight here.

Cloud and DevOps engineers. A help desk or a contact centre that goes down stops a company talking to its customers, so reliability is part of the product. Cloud engineers build and run these platforms, mostly at Freshworks, the large help-desk suite. The postings require Python and Go on AWS and Kubernetes, with Terraform and Jenkins.

Frontend engineers. A support agent spends the whole day in one screen, with the customer's history, the open tickets and the suggested reply side by side, and the customer sees a chat window or a help centre. Frontend engineers build these screens in React, Angular and Vue, with attention to component design and state management. They are about twice as common here as at most product companies.

.NET engineers. Much of the contact-centre software that large enterprises still run, from workforce management to call recording, was built on the Microsoft stack. .NET engineers maintain and extend it, mostly at NiCE, in C# with Angular and SQL Server. They are hired almost entirely with experience.

Backend engineers not tied to one language. Freshworks hires many backend engineers without naming a single language, across Ruby on Rails, Java and the main clouds, and the postings often require REST Assured for testing the services they build. This group is several times as common here as at a typical product company.

Full-stack engineers across frameworks. A distinctive group works across a React or Vue front end and whatever back end the product uses, mostly at the help-desk suites and Broccoli AI, an AI-agent start-up. They are about twice as common here as elsewhere.

Test engineers. Testers are fewer here than at most product companies. Many of the postings are for performance testing with JMeter, Gatling and LoadRunner, because a contact centre has to take its busiest hour without failing, and the rest automate in Java with Playwright and Selenium.

Smaller groups. Data engineers build the analytics behind reviews and conversation intelligence, in Python, Java, Kafka and Spark. JavaScript and Node engineers build chatbots and conversational platforms. Python engineers work on conversation intelligence. Salesforce and CRM developers connect the contact centre to the CRM. A few C/C++ engineers work on the voice and media layer of the contact centre, and mobile engineers build the help-desk and field-service apps.

Rare here. SAP, firmware and Software Engineer, Security roles barely appear.