Data Scientist - Natural Language Processing

Placements24; Durban; On-site; ZAR 900,000 - 1,300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Durban office

Professional development

Health insurance

Retirement savings plan

Training and workshops

Job summary

Placements24 in Durban seeks a skilled Data Scientist with NLP specialization to design, build, and deploy advanced NLP models that extract insights from large text datasets. You will collaborate with data engineers, software teams, and business analysts to deliver impactful text-driven solutions.

The role requires strong Python expertise, ML fundamentals, and hands-on experience with NLP libraries, with a focus on creating production-ready models and clear stakeholder communication.

Qualifications

• Advanced degree in a quantitative field related to NLP and ML.
• Minimum 3+ years hands-on NLP and data science experience.
• Strong Python skills and experience with NLP libraries.
• Experience deploying NLP models in production environments.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and deploy NLP models for text classification, sentiment, NER, and topic modeling.
• Process large volumes of unstructured text data and extract actionable insights.
• Develop feature engineering techniques for text data.
• Collaborate with software engineers to integrate models into production systems.
• Conduct exploratory data analysis and monitor model performance.

Skills

NLP

Python

Machine Learning

Text analytics

Linguistics basics

Communication

Education

Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Data Science, Computational Linguistics

Tools

NLTK

spaCy

Transformers (Hugging Face)

Gensim

TensorFlow

PyTorch

Word2Vec / GloVe

SQL

Job description

About the Role

Our client is seeking a skilled Data Scientist with a specialization in Natural Language Processing (NLP) to join their team in **Durban**. This role is crucial for developing and deploying advanced NLP models that drive business insights and enhance product capabilities. You will work with complex text data, transforming raw information into actionable intelligence. The position requires a deep understanding of linguistic principles and machine learning techniques applied to text. This is an on-site role, fostering close collaboration with data engineers, software developers, and business analysts within our client's Durban office. You will be instrumental in extracting meaning, sentiment, and patterns from unstructured text, contributing to innovative solutions that impact various facets of the business. We are looking for a candidate who is passionate about pushing the boundaries of NLP and delivering tangible value through data-driven approaches. The role demands strong analytical rigor and a creative mindset to tackle challenging NLP problems.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, build, and deploy NLP models for tasks such as text classification, sentiment analysis, named entity recognition, and topic modeling.
• Process and analyze large volumes of unstructured text data.
• Develop and implement feature engineering techniques specific to text data.
• Collaborate with software engineering teams to integrate NLP models into production systems.
• Conduct exploratory data analysis to identify trends and patterns in text data.
• Evaluate and fine-tune model performance using appropriate metrics.
• Stay current with the latest research and advancements in NLP and machine learning.
• Communicate findings and insights to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Contribute to the development of data dictionaries and best practices for text data management.

Requirements

• Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Data Science, Computational Linguistics, or a related quantitative field.
• 3+ years of hands-on experience in Data Science, with a strong focus on NLP.
• Proficiency in Python and NLP libraries such as NLTK, spaCy, Transformers (Hugging Face), and Gensim.
• Experience with machine learning frameworks like TensorFlow or PyTorch.
• Solid understanding of linguistic theories and computational linguistics concepts.
• Experience with text preprocessing, tokenization, and embedding techniques (e.g., Word2Vec, GloVe, BERT).
• Knowledge of database querying (SQL) and experience with big data technologies is a plus.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills.
• Ability to work effectively in a collaborative, team-oriented environment.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and benefits package.
• Opportunity to work on challenging and impactful NLP projects.
• Support for professional development and continuous learning.
• Collaborative work environment in our Durban office.
• Access to advanced computing resources.
• Health insurance and retirement savings plan.
• Company-sponsored training and workshops.