Natural Language Processing (NLP) Specialist
NLP Specialists are needed to work on text analysis, language modelling, and conversational systems. Responsibilities include data annotation, training language models, and integrating NLP tools into applications. Experience with spaCy, NLTK, Hugging Face, and transformer-based architectures is essential.
Job Overview:
We are seeking a skilled NLP Specialist to design, develop, and implement natural language processing solutions that enable machines to understand, interpret, and generate human language. This role involves working with large-scale text datasets and deploying conversational AI applications across South Africa and remote environments.
Employment Type:
Full-time or contract roles depending on business needs
Remuneration:
Market-related, dependent on skills and experience
Reporting Line:
Reports to AI Engineering Manager, Data Science Lead, or Head of Innovation
Working Conditions:
Location: South Africa or remote
Work Environment: Flexible hours with collaboration across teams and time zones
Tools Provided: Access to cloud resources, development environments, and collaboration platforms
Key Responsibilities:
Develop and optimise NLP models for tasks such as text classification, sentiment analysis, named entity recognition, and machine translation.
Preprocess and clean text data, including tokenisation, stemming, and lemmatization.
Train and fine-tune language models using frameworks such as Hugging Face Transformers, spaCy, or NLTK.
Build and deploy conversational AI systems such as chatbots and virtual assistants.
Collaborate with data engineers and software developers to integrate NLP solutions into products.
Monitor model performance, conduct error analysis, and refine models to improve accuracy.
Stay updated on the latest NLP research and tools, applying innovations to practical applications.
Document workflows, model architectures, and usage guidelines.
Required Skills and Competencies:
Proficiency in Python and NLP libraries including spaCy, NLTK, Hugging Face Transformers, or Gensim.
Strong understanding of linguistic concepts and machine learning as applied to text data.
Experience with deep learning models such as BERT, GPT, or other transformer architectures.
Ability to handle unstructured text data and perform feature engineering.
Familiarity with cloud platforms for model deployment (AWS, Azure, GCP).
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
Good communication skills to collaborate with cross-functional teams.
Preferred Qualifications and Experience:
Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics, AI, or related disciplines.
2+ years of hands-on experience in NLP model development and deployment.
Experience working with large-scale language datasets.
Exposure to conversational AI platforms and chatbot frameworks is an advantage.