Linguist III

BCforward; California (MO); Hybrid; USD 52,000 - 72,000; Full time

Job summary

BCforward is seeking a Linguist III in a contract role to apply linguistics expertise across phonetics, phonology, and NLP. Responsibilities include designing transcription experiments, developing normalization processes, and managing lexical data.

Qualifications include a linguistics background, a bachelor's degree, and SQL/Python skills. Familiarity with SAMPA, IPA, and ToBI is expected, along with strong communication abilities.

Qualifications

• Foundational linguistics background with applied linguistics knowledge in phonetics and phonology.
• Bachelor's degree in linguistics or related field.
• Proficiency in SQL and Python.
• Ability to analyze waveforms and spectrograms.
• Knowledge of transcription systems such as SAMPA, IPA, and ToBI.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Provide linguistic expertise across phonetics, phonology, lexicography, dialectology, and NLP.
• Design and conduct experiments to evaluate transcription quality.
• Develop manual and automated processes for high-quality label alignments and related tasks.
• Create and refine text normalization and inverse text normalization processes.
• Manage lexical and phrasal transcriptions and related data.
• Analyze system metrics and address identified gaps.

Skills

Linguistics

Phonetics

Phonology

NLP

SQL

Python

Waveform analysis

Speech data

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in linguistics

Tools

SAMPA

IPA

ToBI

Job description

Job Title: Linguist III

Location: Redmond, WA or Burlingame, CA (Onsite hybrid)

Duration: Contract - 6 months, with potential extension

Pay Range: $45/hr

Job ID: 410121

About BCforward

BCforward is a leading global IT consulting and workforce solutions firm providing services and support to Fortune 500 and government clients. Founded in 1998, BCforward has grown with our customers needs into a full-service business solutions provider. With delivery centers and offices across North America and India, we take pride in building long-term relationships and delivering excellence through innovation, collaboration, and integrity.

Job Description

We are seeking a Linguist III to join our dynamic team. The ideal candidate will have strong experience in phonetics, phonology, lexicography, dialectology, NLP, and linguistic data operations and a proven ability to design and evaluate transcription experiments, develop scalable normalization and annotation processes, and drive data-informed product improvements.

Responsibilities:

• Provide linguistic expertise across phonetics, phonology, lexicography, dialectology, and NLP.
• Design and conduct experiments to evaluate transcription quality.
• Develop manual and automated processes for high-quality label alignments, prosodic classification, POS identification and disambiguation, targeted modeling datasets, and user feedback integration.
• Create and refine text normalization and inverse text normalization processes.
• Manage lexical and phrasal transcriptions and related data.
• Analyze system metrics, including user opinion, lexicon transcription coverage, and POS tagger performance, and address identified gaps.

Required Skills & Qualifications:

• Foundational linguistics background with applied linguistics knowledge in phonetics and phonology, including familiarity with spoken versus written forms.
• Bachelor\'s degree in linguistics, language technologies, computational linguistics, speech science, or a related field.
• Technical skills in SQL and Python.
• Ability to analyze waveforms and spectrograms.
• Knowledge of prescriptive writing and punctuation conventions for at least one language.
• Knowledge of transcription and annotation systems such as SAMPA, IPA, and ToBI.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

Preferred Skills:

• Computational linguistics and ASR experience, including quality evaluation using WER, CER, and SER, dataset creation and quality assessment for commissioned and synthetic data, and understanding of contextual biasing.
• Human grading operations, including hands-on grading, guideline authoring, and annotator training.
• Experience with offline and synthetic datasets and live traffic quality evaluation for voice assistants.

Why BCforward?

At BCforward, we believe in advancing lives and careers. When you join our team, you gain access to:

• Competitive compensation and benefits.
• Opportunities for growth with global clients.
• A supportive, inclusive culture that values innovation and people.
• Exposure to cutting-edge technologies and projects.

About Our Commitment

BCforward is an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, or veteran status.

Additional Notes

Candidate profiles that may not align with this role include purely data science or engineering backgrounds without formal linguistics, and professional translation or localization backgrounds. Requisition has been released and supplier live will be conducted on 9/24. Do not resubmit candidates from 72469-1 or 72523-1 who were previously qualified and not interviewed, or interviewed and not proceeded with.