Senior AI Engineer - NLP Specialist

Placements24; Queenstown; On-site; NZD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary & bonuses

Health, dental & vision insurance

Generous paid time off

Job summary

Placements24 seeks a Senior AI Engineer (NLP) to design, implement, and deploy state-of-the-art language models in Queenstown, NZ. The role involves building NLP pipelines, handling large text datasets, and delivering production-ready services.

You will collaborate with researchers and engineers on text classification, sentiment analysis, NER, translation, and dialogue systems, while staying current with the latest NLP advances. Relocation support is available.

Qualifications

• Master's or Ph.D. in CS/AI/Linguistics with NLP focus.
• ≥5 years of NLP model development and production deployment.
• Proficiency with Python and NLP libraries (NLTK, SpaCy, Transformers).
• Experience with DL architectures for NLP (Transformers, LSTMs).
• Experience with cloud ML services.
• Strong problem-solving and communication skills.
• CI/CD and Git experience.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and deploy advanced NLP models and algorithms.
• Develop and optimize NLP pipelines for text processing and model training.
• Work with large-scale text datasets, ensuring data quality and relevance.
• Collaborate with product managers and engineers to define NLP requirements.
• Stay current with NLP research and advancements in ML and DL.
• Build production-level NLP services with scalability and reliability.
• Conduct experiments to evaluate and improve model performance.
• Contribute to the NLP roadmap and mentor junior engineers.

Skills

Python

NLTK

SpaCy

Transformers

TensorFlow

PyTorch

NLP pipelines

Cloud ML services

Education

Master's or PhD in CS/AI/Linguistics with NLP focus

Tools

AWS

Azure

GCP

Job description

About the Role

Our client, a leader in developing advanced conversational AI solutions, is seeking a highly skilled Senior AI Engineer with a specialization in Natural Language Processing (NLP) to join their dedicated team in Queenstown, Eastern Cape . This role is central to advancing our capabilities in understanding and generating human language. You will be responsible for designing, developing, and deploying sophisticated NLP models and applications that power our next-generation products. Working closely with a team of talented researchers and engineers, you will tackle complex challenges in areas such as text classification, sentiment analysis, named entity recognition, machine translation, and dialogue systems. The ideal candidate has a deep understanding of NLP techniques, a passion for linguistic AI, and a proven ability to deliver high-quality, production-ready solutions. This is a critical role for driving innovation in human-computer interaction.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and deploy advanced NLP models and algorithms.
• Develop and optimize NLP pipelines for tasks such as text pre-processing, feature extraction, and model training.
• Work with large-scale text datasets, ensuring data quality and relevance.
• Collaborate with product managers and other engineers to define NLP requirements and integrate solutions into products.
• Stay current with the latest research and advancements in NLP, machine learning, and deep learning.
• Build and maintain production-level NLP services, ensuring scalability and reliability.
• Conduct experiments to evaluate and improve model performance.
• Contribute to the technical roadmap for NLP development within the company.
• Mentor junior engineers and share expertise in NLP.

Requirements

• Master's or Ph.D. degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Linguistics, or a related field with a focus on NLP.
• Minimum of 5 years of experience in developing and deploying NLP models in production environments.
• Strong proficiency in Python and NLP libraries/frameworks such as NLTK, SpaCy, Hugging Face Transformers, TensorFlow, or PyTorch.
• Experience with various NLP tasks: text classification, sentiment analysis, NER, topic modeling, machine translation, question answering.
• Solid understanding of deep learning architectures relevant to NLP (e.g., RNNs, LSTMs, Transformers).
• Experience with large language models (LLMs) and their application.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and their ML services.
• Excellent problem-solving, analytical, and communication skills.
• Experience with software development best practices, including version control (Git) and CI/CD.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and performance-based bonuses.
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance.
• Generous paid time off and holidays.
• Opportunities for professional development, training, and attending AI conferences.
• A collaborative and innovative work environment in Queenstown, Eastern Cape .
• The chance to work on cutting-edge NLP technologies with real-world impact.
• Relocation assistance may be considered for exceptional candidates.