Lebanese Arabic NLP Specialist

Arabic NLP Lead – AI Hotline Project (Consultancy)

About SARI Global

SARI Global is a research and risk intelligence firm serving humanitarian organisations, UN agencies, embassies and government clients across the Middle East and Africa. We combine field expertise with our own technology, including the STRAT-i incident intelligence platform and a 24/7 security operations centre.

About the project

We are putting together a team to design and deploy a controlled, AI-enabled hotline support system for a government public-safety service in Lebanon, funded by an international humanitarian donor. The system will run on WhatsApp or web chat, with an optional voice component. It handles public enquiries in Arabic using pre-approved content only and passes anything urgent or sensitive to human officers.

The role

You will lead the Arabic language side of the system:

• Test and benchmark chatbot and speech platforms on Lebanese Arabic before a platform is chosen
• Design a controlled setup: the system recognises what the user is asking and serves a pre-approved answer. It never generates free text.
• Build test sets, out-of-scope detection, confidence thresholds and the handover to a human operator
• Measure and report accuracy, the share of enquiries handled without a human, and the errors
• Advise on whether automated Arabic voice (speech recognition and text-to-speech) works well enough for Lebanese callers

Must-haves

• Proven technical experience in Arabic NLP, with at least one Arabic language system deployed in production
• Experience with Levantine or Lebanese dialect, Arabizi (Arabic written in Latin letters and numbers) and Arabic mixed with French or English
• Hands-on work classifying user questions and retrieving answers in Arabic, using Arabic language models, text normalisation and similar tools
• Experience building evaluation test sets and measuring accuracy
• Fluent Arabic and English

Strong pluses

• Arabic speech recognition or text-to-speech (Whisper, Azure, Google or similar)
• WhatsApp Business API or chatbot frameworks (Rasa, Botpress or similar)
• Publications or datasets in Arabic NLP (ArabicNLP/WANLP, MADAR, NADI)
• Based in Lebanon, native Arabic speaker, working French
• Experience on humanitarian, public-safety or government projects

Engagement

Part-time consultancy. About 15–25 working days over 12–16 weeks, concentrated in the design and testing phases. Expected start: October 2026. Beirut-based preferred; remote considered.

Important

This consultancy depends on the contract being awarded (the project is pending funding). By applying, you consent to SARI Global including your CV and profile in its technical proposal to the contracting organisation. Your details will be used for this bid only.

How to apply

Send the following to careers@sari.global with the subject line "Arabic NLP Lead – AI Hotline":

1. Your CV
2. A short description of one Arabic NLP system you shipped, with a link, a reference or the results you measured
3. Your daily rate (USD) and availability from October 2026
4. The sentence: "I consent to my CV being included in SARI Global's proposal."

• Deadline: Monday 28 September 2026, 23:59 Beirut time. Shortlisted candidates will be contacted the same day.