Job Title: Linguist III
Duration: 8+ Months
Location: Remote
 
Job description:

• 0-3 years of experience.
• Must have a graduate degree in Linguistics
• Must be native speaker of a non-English language (preferably Indonesian) with a high level of proficiency in another Austronesian language, plus broad knowledge of other languages in the same family.

 
Main duties:

• Perform linguistic analyses on large datasets.
• Perform linguistic error analysis of AI model outputs, determining what the most frequent and severe error categories are.
• Write and revise guidelines for human annotation and other AI projects, including but not limited to translation tasks.
• Conduct typological and sociolinguistic research on a large number of languages, highlighting their similarities and differences.
• Perform linguistic analyses for Responsible AI (toxic language, hate speech, gender bias and other cultural biases) in massively multilingual settings.
• Conduct linguistic literature reviews on various NLP-adjacent topics, and summarize findings.
• Compare the quality of deliveries between vendors, identify error patterns, and provide actionable feedback.
• Provide information or guidance relative to any aspect of linguistic knowledge (typology, morpho-syntax, sociolinguistics, classification, phonetics/phonology, pragmatics, etc.).
• Reach out to and collaborate with native speakers in various languages.
• Communicate results of linguistic analyses to engineers and research scientists.

 
Skills:

• Must have strong written and spoken communication skills, especially business and research communication.
• Must be native speaker of a non-English language (preferably Indonesian) with a high level of proficiency in another Austronesian language, plus broad knowledge of other languages in the same family.
• Working knowledge in other languages is a plus. Proficiency in a low-resource language is valued.
• Must be able to code in Python (must) and query databases using SQL, other coding languages used for data analysis are a plus.
• Must be able to independently work through complex requests and perform under pressure.
• Strong ability to work independently, prioritize, plan, and track work, as well as report progress
• education or training in the basics of project management is a plus
• self-motivation is a must
• Working knowledge of international language-classification standards is valued.

 
Education:

• Graduate degree in Linguistics or related field is a must; PhD is a plus
• A background or specialization in corpus linguistics is a plus
• Experience with field work is a plus
• a graduate degree in Literature or English is not an appropriate substitution
• degree in Computer Science with a specialization in NLP is not an appropriate substitution
• Must have a very firm grasp of the following linguistic fields: language typology, syntax, morphology, sociolinguistics (especially dialectology and discourse analysis), corpus linguistics, writing systems, pragmatics, phonology.
• Must have some experience with applying basic Natural Language Processing techniques.

 
Experience:

• Years of experience: 0-3
• Experience working cross-functionally
• Experience collaborating with machine learning, NLP, or software engineers, or data scientists
• Experience contributing to research papers
• Important: Preferably no known conflicts of interest in the fields of machine translation, ASR, TTS, or LLM research (as FAIR Linguists need to be contributing to research papers)

 
Top 3 must-have HARD skills:    

• Must be native speaker of a non-English language (preferably Indonesian) with a high level of proficiency in another Austronesian language, plus broad knowledge of other languages in the same family.
• Perform linguistic error analysis of machine translations and identifying the most frequent and severe error categories
• Strong skills in pattern recognition, cross-functional communication, and multitasking
• Experience with Python

 
Good to have skills:       

• Experience with creating and/or maintaining specialized lexical resources (e.g., profanity dictionaries) a plus

 
Typical Day in the Role:

• Perform linguistic error analysis of machine translations, determining what the most frequent and severe error categories are
• Research literature on various NLP and AI topics (e.g., machine translation, ASR, TTS, LLM), summarize findings, and make suggestions to the team
• Compare quality of human translations between vendors, identify error patterns, and provide actionable feedback
• Maintain and revise guidelines for human translation and linguistic evaluation
• Conduct typological and sociolinguistic research on low-resource languages, highlighting their similarities and differences
• Help build integrity (profanity, hate-speech, bullying) dictionaries for various languages
• Reach out to and collaborate with native speakers in various languages

 
How will performance be measured:

• We have rough KPIs for recurring tasks (such as standard guideline writing or spot-checking of translation deliveries) but a lot of what we do in research is bespoke, so this is harder to tell with certainty.

Soft Skills:

• Ability to independently work through ambiguous requests, based on priorities established by CWAM, and perform under pressure. Able to work cross functionally.

 
Story Behind the Need – Business Group & Key Projects:            

• The FAIR C&L Linguistics team provides linguistic expertise related to catastrophic translations, error analysis, and knowledge base.

 
 
At SPECTRAFORCE, we are committed to maintaining a workplace that ensures fair compensation and wage transparency in adherence with all applicable state and local laws. This position’s starting pay is: $ 50.00/hr.