Linguist

Linguist

Location: UK – Remote

Duration: Through the end of 2026 (3-month contract)

Working Hours: 40 hours per week

Employment Type: Contract

Travel: Not required

Key Responsibilities

• Perform linguistic analyses on large datasets and conduct detailed error analyses of AI model outputs.
• Identify frequent, severe, and systematic linguistic error categories and communicate findings to research and engineering teams.
• Build, refine, and test evaluation and challenge datasets covering areas such as:
• Machine translation
• Linguistic reasoning
• Spontaneous speech
• Debate and tutoring
• Pronoun resolution
• Cultural and societal nuances
• Develop and revise guidelines for human annotation, translation tasks, and other AI research projects.
• Conduct typological and sociolinguistic research across a large number of languages, identifying linguistic similarities and differences.
• Support Responsible AI research involving areas such as toxic language, hate speech, gender bias, and other cultural or societal biases.
• Conduct literature reviews on linguistics and NLP-adjacent topics and synthesize findings for research teams.
• Compare vendor deliverables, identify linguistic quality and error patterns, and provide actionable feedback.
• Provide expert guidance across areas including:
• Language typology
• Morphology
• Syntax and morphosyntax
• Sociolinguistics and dialectology
• Discourse analysis
• Corpus linguistics
• Phonetics and phonology
• Pragmatics
• Writing systems
• Language classification
• Collaborate with native speakers and linguistic experts across multiple languages.
• Communicate linguistic research findings clearly to engineers, research scientists, and other technical stakeholders.
• Read, modify, and execute data-science notebooks using Python, including tools such as pandas.
• Query and analyze datasets using SQL.
• Work independently through complex and ambiguous research requests while managing priorities and communicating progress effectively.

Required Qualifications

• PhD in Linguistics or a closely related field, fully completed. Candidates with a PhD currently in progress are not eligible for this role.
• Near-native or native proficiency in English.
• Near-native or native proficiency in a language belonging to the Dravidian or Bantu language families/groups. Swahili is particularly relevant.
• 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.
• Strong theoretical foundation in general linguistics, including:
• Typology
• Syntax
• Morphology
• Sociolinguistics
• Dialectology and discourse analysis
• Corpus linguistics
• Writing systems
• Pragmatics
• Phonology
• Experience applying basic Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques.
• Strong Python skills, including the ability to read, modify, and execute data-analysis notebooks.
• Ability to query databases using SQL.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, particularly in research and business contexts.
• Ability to work independently, prioritize competing requests, manage timelines, and operate effectively in a fast-paced research environment.
• Experience working cross-functionally with technical teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working with low-resource languages.
• Working knowledge of additional languages.
• Experience with corpus linguistics.
• Fieldwork experience.
• Experience with international language-classification standards.
• Experience collaborating with machine learning, NLP, software engineering, or data science teams.
• Experience contributing to research papers or publications.
• Familiarity with additional programming or data-analysis languages.
• Education or training in basic project management.

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

What You'll Work On

The role supports multilingual AI research initiatives within FAIR, including work related to projects such as:

• No Language Left Behind (NLLB): Multilingual machine translation research spanning hundreds of languages.
• Omnilingual ASR: Research focused on expanding automatic speech recognition capabilities across a very large number of languages.
• Seamless: Multilingual and multimodal speech and translation research.

You will contribute to research that explores how AI systems perform across languages, linguistic structures, dialects, speech patterns, and cultural contexts.

What Makes This Role Unique

This is an opportunity to work at the intersection of theoretical linguistics and frontier AI research.

You will:

• Work directly with research scientists, ML engineers, and data scientists.
• Apply linguistic theory to large-scale AI systems and multilingual datasets.
• Contribute to evaluation and challenge datasets designed to test emerging AI capabilities.
• Work on low-resource and massively multilingual language settings.
• Investigate complex real-world language, including colloquial language, slang, code-mixing, sarcasm, and cultural nuances.
• Contribute to research initiatives with potential impact across a broad range of languages and AI applications.

Success in This Role

Success will be measured by your ability to:

• Deliver high-quality evaluation and challenge datasets.
• Produce accurate and actionable linguistic analyses of AI model outputs.
• Identify meaningful linguistic error patterns and communicate them clearly.
• Develop effective guidelines for annotation and translation tasks.
• Manage complex linguistic requirements across diverse language groups.
• Work effectively and independently in a fast-moving research environment.
• Collaborate successfully with research scientists, engineers, data scientists, vendors, and native speakers.

Important Considerations

This role operates in a fast-paced research environment with multiple active projects and tight timelines. Candidates should be comfortable ramping up quickly, handling ambiguous research questions, and managing competing priorities.

The work may occasionally involve reviewing sensitive or challenging language content, including examples related to hate speech, toxicity, political content, gender bias, and cultural biases, as part of AI evaluation and Responsible AI research.

The role may also involve working with colloquial and spontaneous language containing slang, code-mixing, sarcasm, and other forms of naturally occurring language that can be difficult to analyze using textbook examples.