Linguistics Researcher

Click Learning; Johannesburg; Remote; ZAR 200 000 - 300 000; Full time

Job summary

An educational non-profit organization in South Africa seeks a Researcher to enhance language and literacy assessments. The role involves refining assessments, conducting quantitative analyses, and contributing to program improvements. Ideal candidates will have a Master's degree in Linguistics or a related field and experience in corpus linguistics. The position offers remote work during the first year, transitioning to a hybrid model. Join us in transforming education.

Benefits

Learning opportunities

Dynamic impact-focused team

Remote work offered in Year 1

Qualifications

• Master’s degree (advantage PhD in progress/completed) in Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics, Measurement, or a related field.
• Hands-on experience in corpus linguistics—building or cleaning corpora.
• Highly skilled in quantitative research methods with proficiency in R or Python.

Responsibilities

• Refine literacy, language, and numeracy assessments.
• Perform quantitative analysis and measurement.
• Contribute to Click-wide dissemination and collaboration.

Skills

Quantitative research methods

Corpus linguistics

Analytical Thinking

Communication

Collaboration

Education

Master's degree in Linguistics or related field

Tools

R

Python

Job description

The Role: Researcher

At Click Learning, we believe that every child deserves a strong foundation in literacy and numeracy. That’s why we partner with under-resourced primary schools across South Africa, using educational technology to bridge the education gap. Through interactive personalised online programs, we empower young learners to take control of their learning journey—at their own pace, on their own terms.

But we’re not just about the tech. We’re about impact. Our work not only improves learning outcomes for over 240,000 children across 316 schools but also creates employment for youth who support learners in the computer labs.

We are on a mission to transform education, so we’re adding a linguistics and quantitative researcher to strengthen our language-focused measurement, improve assessment and analytics across English and African languages, and translate findings into non-technical reports for government and partners.

As our Researcher, you’ll strengthen how Click Learning understands and measures language and learning. You’ll bring together linguistics, data, and education to design stronger assessments, analyse multilingual literacy data, and turn complex findings into clear insights that shape implementation and policy.

You’ll play a key role in our Research & Insights team—supporting the design and analysis of tools that measure how children learn to read across English and African languages, and helping translate those findings into practical improvements in our programmes and products.

This is more than a technical role—it’s an opportunity to shape how evidence informs implementation, government engagement, and Click Learning’s broader mission to improve foundational learning outcomes.

What you'll do?

1.Refine literacy, language & numeracy assessments (40%)

• Build/curate child-relevant corpora and frequency lists for South African languages (tokenisation, lemmatisation, basic morphology, quality checks).
• Co-design and adapt oral language, reading and numeracy measures.
• Establish the validity and reliability of existing and new assessments and use this evidence to refine assessment.
• Support instrument pilots, scoring rules, and technical documentation
• Train stakeholders on use of assessments.
• Manage assessment projects.

2.Quantitative analysis & measurement (35%)

• Analyse relationships between vocabulary, decoding, comprehension and numeracy, and implementation data (including product data) to inform research and implementation
• Develop reproducible data pipelines (R or Python) for cleaning, scoring, and reporting; contribute to codebooks, metadata, anonymisation, and open data releases.
• Create clear figures/tables and short, decision-ready reports for non-technical audiences.
• Monitor EGRA data collection as needed.
• Mentor and train the Research Assistant and other team members in data analysis & reporting.

3.Click-wide contribution & dissemination (25%)

• Co-author technical notes, briefs, and slide decks for funders, government, and internal stakeholders.
• Collaborate with Operations/Training on practical implications for implementation and facilitator training.
• Present findings in internal forums and external convenings such as conferences; contribute to public-good documentation (CC BY).
• Provide light advisory support to adjacent R&I projects (e.g., EGRA/early literacy analyses, product comparisons, dashboard inputs).
• Embed a learning culture in your work.
• Contribute to research papers for technical audiences and blogs for non-technical audiences.

What we are looking for?

• Hold a Master’s degree (advantage PhD in progress/completed) in Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics, Measurement, or a related field.
• Have hands-on experience in corpus linguistics—building or cleaning corpora, analysing frequency and dispersion, and understanding morphology or orthographic variation.
• Are highly skilled in quantitative research methods, with proficiency in R or Python for data wrangling, modelling, and visualisation.
• Have a solid grounding in psychometrics or educational measurement (e.g. Classical Test Theory, Item Response Theory, mixed models).
• Have demonstrated experience in designing or adapting language and literacy assessments for English and African Languages
• Experience with early-grade literacy assessments such as EGRA or comparable instruments.
• Communicate complex linguistic or statistical concepts clearly and concisely for non-technical audiences.
• Have experience working in multilingual African contexts or on projects involving multiple languages of instruction.
• Bring familiarity with open science and reproducible workflows (e.g., Quarto/R Markdown, GitHub, tidyverse/pandas).

Experience in the following areas would be an advantage:

• Use of IRT tooling (mirt, TAM, or Python equivalents), policy linking, or ROC analyses.
• Exposure to NLP or phonetics tools (spaCy, Stanza, Praat, or similar).
• Working proficiency in one or more South African African languages

• Analytical Thinking: Strong quantitative and linguistic reasoning skills; comfortable linking theoretical constructs to real-world measurement.
• Communication: Able to write and present clearly for diverse audiences—bridging technical accuracy with accessibility.
• Collaboration: Works well across disciplines (linguistics, data science, education), contributing to shared problem-solving and documentation.
• Adaptability: Thrives in a fast-paced environment including non-academic colleagues; can pivot between deep analysis and applied tasks.
• Rigor and Integrity: Maintains high technical standards while ensuring results are usable and transparent.
• Initiative: Proactive in identifying data or methodological improvements; comfortable managing complex analytic tasks with minimal supervision.
• Attention to Detail: Produces accurate, version-controlled, and well-documented outputs.

Why Join Us?

• Be part of a mission-driven organization tackling South Africa’s literacy and numeracy crisis head-on.
• Work in a dynamic, impact-focused team that values learning, innovation, and collaboration where insights are actively used to improve implementation and impact.
• Shape the future of EdTech in Africa.
• Grow professionally through learning opportunities.
• Remote work offered in Year 1 of the contract, after which hybrid work is possible from one of our four offices (Cape Town, East London, Johannesburg, White River).