Research Engineer - Arabic NLP

New York University; Al Ruways Industrial City; On-site; AED 178,560 - 267,840; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Housing support

Education subsidies

Relocation assistance

Health and wellness services

Advanced computing resources

Job summary

New York University Abu Dhabi is seeking a Research Engineer for the CAMeL Lab to advance Arabic NLP research. You will develop tools, research resources, and ML models for linguistic analysis and translation.

The role emphasizes transforming prototypes into robust software, maintaining data pipelines, and contributing to publications and open-source resources in a collaborative environment.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Computational Linguistics, Language Technologies, or a related field for appointment as Research Engineer.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related discipline with approximately 3–5 years of relevant experience for appointment as Research Technician.
• Experience in natural language processing, computational linguistics, machine learning, or language technology development.

Responsibilities

• Develop software tools and resources for NLP and computational linguistics projects.
• Contribute to Arabic NLP applications including orthography normalization, grammatical error correction, morphological tagging, syntax parsing, and readability assessment.
• Build and maintain machine translation, text analytics, and language-processing systems.
• Implement ML models for linguistic analysis, classification, sequence labeling, generation, and translation.
• Convert research prototypes into stable, documented software.
• Develop data-processing pipelines for collecting, cleaning, annotating, transforming, and evaluating linguistic datasets.
• Create APIs, command-line tools, libraries, and research interfaces for internal and public use.
• Test software for functionality, performance, reliability, and reproducibility.

Skills

Natural language processing

Computational linguistics

Arabic NLP

Machine learning

Python

Software engineering

Research programming

Multilingual NLP

Data science

API development

Education

Master’s degree

Bachelor’s degree

Tools

Version control

Linux

Job description

Job Overview

Research Engineer – Arabic NLP – Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. This full‑time position is offered by NewYork University Abu Dhabi’s CAMeL Lab, a leading research laboratory in Arabic natural language processing and related fields.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop software tools and research resources for natural language processing and computational linguistics projects.
• Contribute to Arabic NLP applications involving orthography normalization, grammatical error correction, morphological tagging, syntax parsing, and readability assessment.
• Build and maintain machine translation, text analytics, and language‑processing systems.
• Implement machine learning models for linguistic analysis, classification, sequence labeling, generation, and translation.
• Convert research prototypes into stable, documented, and reusable software.
• Develop data‑processing pipelines for collecting, cleaning, annotating, transforming, and evaluating linguistic datasets.
• Create APIs, command‑line tools, libraries, and research interfaces for internal and public use.
• Test software for functionality, performance, reliability, and reproducibility.
• Troubleshoot model behavior, data‑quality issues, software defects, and deployment problems.
• Maintain source‑code repositories, technical documentation, installation instructions, and release records.
• Support the publication and maintenance of open‑source language resources and tools.
• Run computational experiments and evaluate results using appropriate NLP metrics.
• Prepare tables, figures, analyses, and technical summaries for research publications.
• Contribute to manuscripts, conference papers, technical reports, and research presentations.
• Collaborate with faculty members, researchers, engineers, students, and external academic partners.
• Participate in code reviews, laboratory meetings, project planning, and research discussions.
• Stay current with advances in large language models, machine translation, deep learning, and multilingual NLP.

Ideal Profile

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Computational Linguistics, Language Technologies, or a related field for appointment as Research Engineer.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related discipline with approximately 3–5 years of relevant experience for appointment as Research Technician.
• Previous experience in natural language processing, computational linguistics, machine learning, or language technology development.
• Strong programming and software engineering skills.
• Practical experience developing maintainable research or production software.
• Familiarity with machine learning frameworks and data‑processing libraries.
• Experience working with linguistic datasets, model evaluation, or text‑processing pipelines.
• Some research publication experience is preferred.
• Knowledge of Arabic is advantageous but not required.
• Previous work on Arabic natural language processing is preferred but not essential.
• Strong analytical, debugging, and problem‑solving ability.
• Effective written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to work independently while contributing productively within a collaborative research environment.
• Emirati candidates are encouraged to apply.

Skills Set

• Natural language processing
• Computational linguistics
• Arabic NLP
• Machine learning
• Artificial intelligence
• Software engineering
• Python
• Deep learning
• Machine translation
• Text analytics
• Orthography normalization
• Grammatical error correction
• Morphological tagging
• Syntax parsing
• Readability assessment
• Language‑resource development
• Dataset preparation
• Data annotation
• NLP evaluation
• API development
• Open‑source development
• Version control
• Software testing
• Technical documentation
• Research programming
• Model deployment
• Scientific writing
• Academic publishing
• Multilingual NLP
• Data science

Benefits and Employment Terms

Competitive salary range: 16,000–24,000AED per month. The position includes housing support, educational subsidies for eligible children, relocation assistance, health and wellness services, and access to advanced computing resources. The role also offers opportunities for academic publication, international collaboration, and the development of publicly available research tools.

Legal and Equality Statement

NewYork University Abu Dhabi is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to gender, national origin, or other protected characteristics.