Linguist II

Linguist II

We are looking for a linguist to help develop language components for AI-powered products, including large language models (LLMs) and voice-enabled technologies. We are seeking candidates with solid linguistic data analysis skills, programming familiarity, and language technology experience to contribute to data collection, synthetic data generation, and annotation tasks in support of LLM/AI training, evaluation, alignment, and AI agent development.

Key responsibilities include:

• Apply linguistic expertise in syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics to support LLM and generative AI systems
• Collaborate with linguists, data operations teams, and Machine Learning (ML) engineers on data collection, curation, annotation, and localization efforts for model training and fine-tuning
• Contribute to the development and maintenance of annotation schemas and guidelines for LLM training data (e.g., instruction-tuning, preference labeling, Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback [RLHF])
• Evaluate and quality-check datasets used for pre-training, fine-tuning, and alignment of language models
• Support the development of programmatic methods for generating synthetic annotated data at scale
• Assist in model evaluation efforts including prompt-based testing, red-teaming, and linguistic error analysis
• Participate in experiments to assess data quality, annotation consistency, and downstream model performance

Minimum qualifications include:

• Bachelor's degree in Linguistics, Computational Linguistics, Computer Science, Speech Science, or related field
• 2+ years of experience in Linguistics, Language Technologies, Natural Language Processing (NLP), or AI/ Machine Learning (ML) data operations (or equivalent)
• Native or near-native fluency in English and at least one additional language
• Knowledge of syntax, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics, and other areas of linguistics
• Familiarity with Large Language Models (LLMs), their applications and data practices (training data, evaluation, prompting, fine-tuning)
• Exposure to LLM evaluation methodologies (human evaluation, automated metrics, adversarial testing)
• Experience working with semantic ontologies, taxonomies, or intent/slot frameworks
• Proficiency using Artificial Intelligence (AI) Agents/Chatbots
• Experience with database queries and data analysis processes (Structured Query Language [SQL], spreadsheets, R, Unix, or others)
• Experience working with speech and text data in multiple languages
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced, highly collaborative environment with evolving priorities

Preferred qualifications include:

• Master's degree in Linguistics, Computational Linguistics, Language Technologies, or a related field
• Familiarity with machine learning frameworks, NLP libraries, and tools (e.g., Hugging Face, spaCy, Natural Language Toolkit [NLTK], PyTorch)
• Exposure to statistical language modeling or training data pipelines
• Strong organizational skills and attention to detail
• Prior FAANG/Big Tech

Location:

Onsite/Hybrid in one of these offices [New York, NY / Burlingame, CA / Redmond, WA]

Salary Range:
The salary for this position is between $68,640 – $118,560 annually. Factors which may affect pay within this range may include geography/market, skills, education, experience, and other qualifications of the successful candidate.

Benefits:
The Company offers the following benefits for this position, subject to applicable eligibility requirements: [medical insurance] [dental insurance] [vision insurance] [401(k) retirement plan] [long-term disability insurance] [short-term disability insurance] [5 personal days accrued each calendar year. The Paid time off benefits meet the paid sick and safe time laws that pertains to the City/ State] [10-15 days of paid vacation time] [6 paid holidays and 1 floating holiday per calendar year] [Ascendion Learning Management System]

Want to change the world? Let us know. Tell us about your experiences, education, and ambitions. Bring your knowledge, unique viewpoint, and creativity to the table. Let's talk!