Natural Language Processing (NLP) Engineer

Placements24; Stellenbosch Local Municipality; Hybrid; ZAR 420,000 - 720,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Healthcare benefits

Hybrid work arrangement

Job summary

Placements24 is seeking an experienced NLP Engineer to join a Paarl-based team in a hybrid role, blending office collaboration with remote flexibility. You will design, develop, and deploy state-of-the-art NLP models for text analysis, sentiment detection, translation, and conversational AI.

The ideal candidate has a PhD or Master’s in a related field, 2+ years in NLP, strong Python skills, and familiarity with TF/PyTorch and major NLP libraries.

Qualifications

• Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics, or related NLP field.
• 2+ years hands-on NLP model development and deployment experience.
• Proficiency in Python and NLP libraries (NLTK, SpaCy, Transformers, Gensim).
• Solid understanding of ML algorithms and DL architectures (RNNs, LSTMs, Transformers).
• Experience with data preprocessing, feature engineering, and NLP evaluation metrics.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and fine-tune NLP models for tasks like text classification and NER.
• Use TensorFlow or PyTorch to build and train NLP models.
• Develop and maintain data processing pipelines for large text corpora.
• Collaborate with product managers and engineers to define NLP features and integration.
• Evaluate model performance and iterate to improve accuracy and efficiency.
• Stay current with NLP research trends and advancements.

Skills

NLP libraries

Python

Deep learning

ML algorithms

Data preprocessing

Education

Master's or PhD in CS/Computational Linguistics

Tools

TensorFlow

PyTorch

NLTK

SpaCy

Hugging Face Transformers

Job description

About the Role

Our client is looking for an experienced Natural Language Processing (NLP) Engineer to join their dynamic team in Paarl . This role focuses on developing and deploying state-of-the-art NLP models for a variety of applications, including text analysis, sentiment detection, machine translation, and conversational AI. You will work on challenging problems, leveraging your expertise in machine learning and linguistics to build intelligent systems. This position offers a hybrid work model, blending office-based collaboration with remote flexibility. Join a team dedicated to unlocking the power of human language through advanced AI technologies.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and fine-tune NLP models for tasks such as text classification, named entity recognition, question answering, and summarization.
• Utilize deep learning frameworks like TensorFlow or PyTorch for building and training NLP models.
• Develop and maintain data processing pipelines for large text corpora.
• Collaborate with product managers and other engineers to define NLP features and integrate models into applications.
• Evaluate model performance and iterate on designs to improve accuracy and efficiency.
• Stay current with research trends and advancements in NLP and related AI fields.

Requirements

• Master's or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics, or a related field with a focus on NLP.
• 2+ years of hands‑on experience in developing and deploying NLP models in a professional setting.
• Proficiency in Python and experience with NLP libraries such as NLTK, SpaCy, Hugging Face Transformers, or Gensim.
• Solid understanding of machine learning algorithms and deep learning architectures (e.g., RNNs, LSTMs, Transformers).
• Experience with data preprocessing, feature engineering, and evaluation metrics for NLP tasks.
• Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and performance bonuses.
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance.
• Hybrid work arrangement providing flexibility.
• Professional development and learning opportunities.
• Engage with cutting‑edge NLP research and applications.
• Retirement savings plan.