Senior AI Researcher (NLP)

Placements24; Soweto; Hybrid; ZAR 1,200,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health and dental insurance

Home office stipend

Unlimited professional development

Stock options

Remote work

Job summary

Placements24 is seeking a Senior AI Researcher specializing in NLP for a fully remote role. You will lead NLP research initiatives, develop advanced language models, and drive state-of-the-art methodologies from wherever you are, influencing projects spanning global regions including Soweto and beyond.

The ideal candidate has a PhD or Master’s in a related field, 5+ years of NLP research experience, and hands-on expertise with modern DL frameworks.

Qualifications

• PhD or Master’s in CS/Computational Linguistics/AI with NLP focus.

Responsibilities

• Conduct cutting-edge NLP research including text understanding, generation, translation, and sentiment analysis.
• Develop and implement novel NLP algorithms and deep learning models.
• Design and execute experiments to evaluate model performance and validate research hypotheses.
• Publish research findings in top AI/NLP conferences and journals.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to translate research prototypes into production-ready systems.
• Mentor junior researchers and contribute to the team's overall research strategy.
• Stay abreast of the latest advancements in NLP, ML, and AI.
• Analyze large text datasets to extract insights and inform model development.
• Contribute to IP through patents/publications.
• Present ideas and results to technical and non-technical audiences.

Skills

NLP research

Academic publications

Python

Deep learning

Analytical skills

Remote collaboration

Education

PhD or Master’s in CS/Computational Linguistics/AI

Tools

spaCy

NLTK

Hugging Face Transformers

TensorFlow

PyTorch

JAX

Job description

About the Role

Our client, a leader in the AI & Emerging Technologies sector, is seeking a highly innovative and accomplished Senior AI Researcher specializing in Natural Language Processing (NLP). This is a fully remote position, allowing you to contribute your expertise from anywhere in the world while impacting projects relevant to regions like Soweto, Gauteng, ZA and beyond. You will lead research initiatives, develop novel NLP models, and push the boundaries of language understanding and generation. The ideal candidate will have a strong academic background, a proven track record of impactful research, and hands‑on experience with state‑of‑the‑art NLP techniques and deep learning frameworks. This is a unique opportunity to work on challenging problems, collaborate with leading researchers and engineers, and shape the future of human‑computer interaction through advanced NLP. We foster a culture of innovation, curiosity, and scientific rigor.

Key Responsibilities

• Conduct cutting‑edge research in Natural Language Processing (NLP), including areas like text understanding, generation, translation, and sentiment analysis.
• Develop and implement novel NLP algorithms and deep learning models.
• Design and execute experiments to evaluate model performance and validate research hypotheses.
• Publish research findings in top‑tier AI/NLP conferences and journals.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to translate research prototypes into production‑ready systems.
• Mentor junior researchers and contribute to the team's overall research strategy.
• Stay abreast of the latest advancements in NLP, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.
• Analyze and interpret large text datasets to extract insights and inform model development.
• Contribute to the intellectual property portfolio through patents and publications.
• Present research ideas and results to both technical and non‑technical audiences.

Requirements

• Ph.D. or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics, AI, or a related field with a specialization in NLP.
• Significant research experience (5+ years) in NLP, demonstrated by publications in top conferences (e.g., ACL, EMNLP, NeurIPS).
• Deep expertise in Python and NLP libraries (e.g., spaCy, NLTK, Hugging Face Transformers).
• Proficiency with deep learning frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, or JAX.
• Strong understanding of language models, sequence‑to‑sequence architectures, and attention mechanisms.
• Experience with large‑scale text data processing and analysis.
• Excellent analytical, problem‑solving, and critical thinking skills.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to present complex ideas clearly.
• Proven ability to work independently and collaboratively in a fully remote setting.

Benefits

• Highly competitive salary package and potential for significant bonuses.
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance plans.
• Generous stock options or equity grants.
• Fully remote work arrangement with a dedicated home office stipend.
• Unlimited professional development budget for conferences, courses, and research.
• Access to world‑class research infrastructure and computational resources.
• A highly stimulating and collaborative environment with leading AI experts.
• 401(k) or equivalent retirement savings plan with company match.