Technology Linguist

Overview

We are looking for a technology linguist to develop speech recognition and language understanding systems for deployment in consumer products. As this position will require working with multiple languages outside of English, a strong knowledge of general linguistic theories is required. The successful candidate will have a demonstrated background in the fundamentals of automated speech recognition, natural language processing, and semantic meaning extraction. The candidate will also have a record of working independently with strong time management skills, flexibility, and reliability.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Develop and test components of speech technology systems, including:
  acoustic models, phonology models, language models, NLU models, dialog systems, and text-normalization and filtering models.
• Improve speech recognition and synthesis systems with code updates and maintenance, and design input
• Work with other speech technologists on development and testing of new speech solutions

Primary Skills / Speciality / Technical Skills:

• Strong background in general linguistic theory across multiple languages
• Experience with audio tools such as Praat, SoundForge, or Audition
• Strong command of phonetic transcription such as IPA, or WorldBet (preferred)
• Experience with programming grammars such as ABNF or SSML
• Experience with parsing systems such as TreeBank or Phoenix
• Programming skills in Tcl, Python, and C
• Preferred experience with dialogue management systems such as ChatScript
• Preferred experience with word embedding systems such as GloVe, word2vec, or FastText

Qualifications:

• 3+ years professional experience in computational linguistics or related field
• M.A. or higher in linguistics or related field
• Fluency in one or more common scripting languages
• Excellent understanding of phonetics, phonological, and acoustic concepts
• Knowledge of fundamentals in hybrid speech recognition, including DNNs and FSTs
• Comfortable with version control systems, preferably Git
• Demonstrated ability in manipulation of large data sets, including transcription, annotation, and QA

Preferences:

• MS degree in Linguistics, Comp. Ling., or related field
• 3 years Computation Linguistics or Machine Learning with emphasis on NLP or ASR

Job Code: 2104