Remote Lead NLP Engineer for AI & Language Models

Placements24; Bloemfontein; Hybrid; ZAR 1,000,000 - 2,000,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote work flexibility

Equity options

Professional development opportunities

Job summary

Placements24 in Bloemfontein is seeking a Lead AI Engineer specializing in NLP to design, build, and deploy advanced NLP models. You will lead a team of engineers and researchers, delivering production-ready AI systems that power sentiment analysis, chatbots, translation, and information extraction.

The ideal candidate will possess a deep understanding of deep learning for NLP, extensive experience with Hugging Face Transformers, spaCy, NLTK, TensorFlow, and PyTorch, and strong Python

Qualifications

• Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Computational Linguistics, or a related field.
• Minimum of 7 years of experience in AI/ML with a strong specialization in Natural Language Processing.
• Proven experience in leading AI/ML projects and teams.
• Extensive experience with NLP libraries and frameworks (e.g., Hugging Face Transformers, spaCy, NLTK, TensorFlow, PyTorch).
• Strong programming skills in Python.
• Deep understanding of NLP concepts, including language modeling, text representation, and semantic understanding.
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and MLOps practices.
• Excellent problem-solving, analytical, and critical thinking skills.
• Strong leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills.
• Experience with large-scale data processing and distributed computing is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, development, and deployment of advanced Natural Language Processing models and systems.
• Develop and implement state-of-the-art NLP algorithms, including deep learning architectures (e.g., Transformers, LSTMs, RNNs).
• Build and optimize NLP pipelines for tasks such as text classification, named entity recognition, machine translation, and question answering.
• Collaborate with product managers and software engineers to integrate NLP capabilities into various applications.
• Manage and mentor a team of AI engineers and researchers, fostering a culture of innovation.
• Conduct research into new NLP techniques and technologies, and evaluate their potential application.
• Ensure the scalability, robustness, and efficiency of deployed NLP models.
• Analyze and interpret model performance, identifying areas for improvement and optimization.
• Stay current with the latest research and trends in AI and NLP.
• Communicate technical concepts and project progress to diverse stakeholders.

Skills

NLP/AI

Python

Leadership

Transformers

Education

Master's/PhD in CS/AI/Computational Linguistics

Tools

Hugging Face Transformers

spaCy

NLTK

TensorFlow

PyTorch

Job description

Placements24 in Bloemfontein is seeking a Lead AI Engineer specializing in NLP to design, build, and deploy advanced NLP models. You will lead a team of engineers and researchers, delivering production-ready AI systems that power sentiment analysis, chatbots, translation, and information extraction.

The ideal candidate will possess a deep understanding of deep learning for NLP, extensive experience with Hugging Face Transformers, spaCy, NLTK, TensorFlow, and PyTorch, and strong Python