Lead NLP Engineer — Shape Language AI & Build Teams

Placements24; South Africa; Remote; ZAR 1,800,000 - 2,800,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Performance bonuses

Comprehensive insurance

Continuous learning & conferences

Job summary

Placements24 in Gauteng seeks a Lead AI Engineer specializing in NLP to drive AI initiatives in Tembisa. You will lead a team of AI engineers and researchers, shaping the end-to-end development lifecycle from concept to deployment and optimization of language AI products.

The role requires a strong NLP background, proven leadership, and hands-on expertise with Python, NLP libraries, and deep learning frameworks, plus cloud and MLOps practices.

Qualifications

• Master's degree or PhD in Computer Science, AI, or NLP.
• 7+ years in AI/ML with a focus on NLP.
• Proven leadership and project management experience.
• Proficient in Python and NLP libraries (NLTK, spaCy, Transformers).

Responsibilities

• Lead a team designing and deploying NLP models.
• Define technical roadmaps aligned with business goals.
• Develop and implement advanced NLP techniques.
• Oversee data collection, preprocessing, and model evaluation.
• Collaborate with product managers and engineers to deliver AI solutions.
• Mentor engineers to foster innovation and excellence.

Skills

Team leadership

Project management

Strategic thinking

Communication

Mentoring

Stakeholder collaboration

Education

Master's degree or Ph.D. in Computer Science/AI/NLP

Tools

Python

NLTK

spaCy

Hugging Face Transformers

TensorFlow

PyTorch

AWS

GCP

Azure

MLOps

Data pipelines

Job description

Placements24 in Gauteng seeks a Lead AI Engineer specializing in NLP to drive AI initiatives in Tembisa. You will lead a team of AI engineers and researchers, shaping the end-to-end development lifecycle from concept to deployment and optimization of language AI products.

The role requires a strong NLP background, proven leadership, and hands-on expertise with Python, NLP libraries, and deep learning frameworks, plus cloud and MLOps practices.