Phonetician / Linguist (Spanish-US)

Omilia; New Mexico; On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Fixed compensation

Long-term employment with vacation

Professional development

Global impact products

Proficient colleagues

Apple gear

Job summary

Omilia seeks a linguistic expert to ensure high-quality multilingual TTS through phoneme inventories, lexicons, and audio corpus review for enterprise-grade voice experiences.

The role requires advanced degrees and hands-on experience with G2P systems, IPA notation, and corpus tools. Collaboration with engineers and researchers will shape synthesis pipelines and data collection.

Qualifications

• M.Sc. or Ph.D. in Linguistics, Phonetics, Computational Linguistics, or related field.
• Proven experience building pronunciation lexicons or G2P systems for TTS or ASR.
• Deep knowledge of phonological theory, articulatory and acoustic phonetics.
• Proficiency with IPA and at least one machine-readable phoneme notation system (X-SAMPA, ARPAbet, etc.)
• Experience with corpus annotation tools (Praat, ELAN, WebAnno, etc.)
• Fluency in English; proficiency in at least one additional language

Responsibilities

• Conduct systematic phonological and phonetic analysis of the American Spanish language.
• Document language-specific features (prosody, stress, tone, coarticulation, dialect variation).
• Produce structured language profiles for TTS model training and evaluation.
• Define and maintain phoneme inventories; map to IPA and TTS-specific conventions.
• Corpus audits and optimal audio references selections for TTS target voice tuning.
• Build and maintain pronunciation lexicons, including G2P rules and exceptions.
• Review and correct machine-generated G2P outputs; conduct pronunciation audits.
• Annotate audio corpora, develop evaluation protocols, and produce error analyses.
• Define linguistic criteria for TTS corpus selection and design prompts for data collection.
• Collaborate with TTS engineers to integrate linguistic artefacts into synthesis pipelines.
• Contribute to internal documentation and participate in research discussions

Skills

Phonological analysis

Phonetics knowledge

Analytical skills

Documentation

English fluency

Education

Master's or PhD in Linguistics/Phonetics/Computational Linguistics

Tools

Praat

ELAN

Audacity

Phonetisaurus

Sequitur

Python

Shell scripting

Job description

Role Purpose

Ensure the linguistic and phonetic quality of Omilia's multilingual Text-to-Speech (TTS) systems by designing phoneme inventories, developing lexicons, and reviewing audio corpora to support enterprise-grade voice experiences.

Accountabilities

Autonomy: Independently conduct phonological and phonetic analysis, design phoneme inventories, and develop lexicons for multiple languages Scope & Complexity: Responsible for linguistic quality across all supported languages in TTS, including handling underrepresented phenomena and complex language-specific features Impact: Directly influences the naturalness, accuracy, and quality of Omilia's TTS output, impacting customer experience in global contact center deployments Influence/Mentorship: Collaborates with TTS engineers, data scientists, and ML researchers; coordinates with native-speaker reviewers and external annotation pipelines

Key Responsibilities

• Conduct systematic phonological and phonetic analysis of the American Spanish language
• Document language-specific features (prosody, stress, tone, coarticulation, dialect variation)
• Produce structured language profiles for TTS model training and evaluation
• Define and maintain phoneme inventories; map to IPA and TTS-specific conventions
• Corpus audits and optimal audio references selections for TTS target voice tuning
• Build and maintain pronunciation lexicons, including G2P rules and exceptions
• Review and correct machine-generated G2P outputs; conduct pronunciation audits
• Annotate audio corpora, develop evaluation protocols, and produce error analyses
• Define linguistic criteria for TTS corpus selection and design prompts for data collection
• Collaborate with TTS engineers to integrate linguistic artefacts into synthesis pipelines
• Contribute to internal documentation and participate in research discussions

Requirements

M.Sc. or Ph.D. in Linguistics, Phonetics, Computational Linguistics, or related field Proven experience building pronunciation lexicons or G2P systems for TTS or ASR Deep knowledge of phonological theory, articulatory and acoustic phonetics Proficiency with IPA and at least one machine-readable phoneme notation system (X-SAMPA, ARPAbet, etc.) Experience with corpus annotation tools (Praat, ELAN, WebAnno, etc.) Strong analytical and documentation skills Fluency in English; proficiency in at least one additional language relevant to Omilia's markets Technical skills: Praat, ELAN, Audacity, PLS/CMUdict/SSML lexicon formats, Phonetisaurus/Sequitur/neural G2P, basic Python or shell scripting, TTS text normalization

Benefits

• Fixed compensation
• Long-term employment with the working days vacation
• Development in professional growth (courses, training, etc)
• Being part of successful cutting-edge technology products that are making a global impact in the service industry
• Proficient and fun-to-work-with colleagues
• Apple gear

Omilia is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and is dedicated to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace