Machine Learning Engineer - NLP Specialization

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

Job summary

Placements24 in Gauteng is seeking a Machine Learning Engineer specialized in NLP to design, train, and deploy production-ready NLP models. You will work within the AI & Emerging Technologies division on projects like text analysis, sentiment analysis, and conversational AI.

Collaborate with product managers and engineers, stay current with NLP research, and contribute to scalable data pipelines and best practices for model deployment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics, Data Science, or a related field.
• Proven experience in developing and deploying NLP models in production.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, train, and deploy production-ready NLP models.
• Implement and optimize NLP algorithms for text classification, NER, topic modeling, QA.
• Develop and maintain data pipelines for NLP model training and evaluation.
• Collaborate with software engineers to integrate NLP models into applications.
• Evaluate model performance and iterate improvements.

Skills

Python

NLP

Deep learning

Team collaboration

Communication

Education

Bachelor's/Master's in CS/Computational Linguistics

Tools

NLTK

spaCy

Transformers

Gensim

Job description

About the Role

Our client, a leading innovator in AI-driven solutions, is looking for a talented Machine Learning Engineer with a specialization in Natural Language Processing (NLP) to join their team in Tembisa, Gauteng. This role is critical for developing and deploying sophisticated NLP models that power our client's next‑generation products and services. You will work within the AI & Emerging Technologies division, contributing to projects that involve text analysis, sentiment analysis, machine translation, and conversational AI. The Tembisa office is a hub of technological advancement, fostering a collaborative and forward‑thinking atmosphere. This is an exciting opportunity to apply your expertise in NLP to real‑world challenges and make a tangible impact. You'll collaborate closely with product managers, data scientists, and software engineers to bring AI‑powered features to life.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, train, and deploy production‑ready NLP models.
• Implement and optimize NLP algorithms for tasks such as text classification, named entity recognition, topic modeling, and question answering.
• Develop and maintain data pipelines for NLP model training and evaluation.
• Work with large datasets of text and other unstructured data.
• Collaborate with software engineers to integrate NLP models into existing applications and systems.
• Evaluate model performance, identify areas for improvement, and implement necessary adjustments.
• Stay current with the latest research and techniques in NLP and machine learning.
• Contribute to the development of best practices for NLP model development and deployment.
• Document models, experiments, and findings thoroughly.

Requirements

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics, Data Science, or a related field.
• Proven experience in developing and deploying NLP models in a production environment.
• Proficiency in Python and NLP libraries such as NLTK, spaCy, Hugging Face Transformers, Gensim.
• Experience with deep learning frameworks like TensorFlow, PyTorch, or Keras.
• Strong understanding of NLP concepts, including embeddings (Word2Vec, GloVe, FastText), language models, sequence‑to‑sequence models, and attention mechanisms.
• Experience with data preprocessing and feature engineering for text data.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and MLOps practices is a plus.
• Excellent problem‑solving and debugging skills.
• Ability to work effectively in a team environment.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.

Benefits

Our client offers a competitive salary, comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, and vision insurance, and retirement savings plans. Employees enjoy a dynamic work culture, opportunities for professional development, and exposure to cutting‑edge AI technologies. The Tembisa location offers a stimulating environment for tech professionals. We believe in empowering our employees and provide a platform for them to grow their careers. The company covers expenses for relevant industry certifications and provides ample time for research and innovation. We also provide access to advanced computing resources.