Senior NLP Engineer - Dialogue Systems

Placements24; Pretoria; Hybrid; ZAR 1,000,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Dental plan

Vision plan

Hybrid work setup

Professional development stipend

Job summary

Placements24 in Pretoria is seeking a Senior NLP Engineer specializing in Dialogue Systems to design, develop, and deploy advanced conversational AI solutions across platforms. This role blends in-office collaboration in Pretoria with remote work flexibility to support our AI & Emerging Technologies division.

You will lead the development of robust NLP models, mentor junior engineers, and work with product, design, and engineering teams to deliver scalable, production-ready dialogue systems.

Qualifications

• Advanced degree in CS, computational linguistics, AI, or related field.
• 4+ years in NLP with emphasis on dialogue systems.
• Proficiency in Python and DL frameworks.
• Experience with NLP libraries and cloud platforms.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and optimize state-of-the-art NLP models for tasks like intent recognition, entity extraction, sentiment analysis, and dialogue state tracking.
• Develop and deploy robust dialogue management systems for chatbots, virtual assistants, and other conversational AI applications.
• Implement and fine-tune large language models for dialogue generation and understanding.
• Collaborate with product managers, designers, and engineers to define requirements and integrate NLP solutions.
• Conduct extensive testing and evaluation of NLP models to ensure performance, accuracy, and scalability.
• Mentor junior engineers and contribute to the team's technical growth.

Skills

NLP

Dialogue systems

Python

Deep learning

Communication

Education

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

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

spaCy

NLTK

Transformers

Job description

About the Role

Our client, a forward-thinking technology firm, is looking for a Senior Natural Language Processing (NLP) Engineer specializing in Dialogue Systems to join their team in Pretoria, Gauteng. This role is critical for enhancing conversational AI capabilities across various platforms. You will be responsible for designing, developing, and deploying sophisticated NLP models and dialogue management systems that power intelligent interactions. This is a hybrid position, offering a blend of collaborative in-office work at our Pretoria, Gauteng location and the flexibility of remote work, allowing you to contribute effectively to our AI & Emerging Technologies division. If you have a passion for natural language understanding and creating seamless human-computer interactions, this is an exciting opportunity.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, build, and optimize state-of-the-art NLP models for tasks such as intent recognition, entity extraction, sentiment analysis, and dialogue state tracking.
• Develop and deploy robust dialogue management systems for chatbots, virtual assistants, and other conversational AI applications.
• Implement and fine-tune large language models (LLMs) for dialogue generation and understanding.
• Collaborate with product managers, designers, and other engineers to define requirements and integrate NLP solutions.
• Conduct extensive testing and evaluation of NLP models and dialogue systems to ensure performance, accuracy, and scalability.
• Analyze user interaction data to identify areas for improvement and drive iterative development.
• Stay abreast of the latest research and advancements in NLP and conversational AI.
• Mentor junior engineers and contribute to the team's technical growth.
• Ensure that developed systems are efficient, scalable, and meet production standards within the Pretoria, Gauteng tech hub.

Requirements

• Master's or PhD degree in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics, Artificial Intelligence, or a related field.
• Proven experience (4+ years) in NLP, with a strong focus on dialogue systems and conversational AI.
• Proficiency in Python and deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow.
• Experience with NLP libraries like spaCy, NLTK, Hugging Face Transformers.
• Solid understanding of machine learning algorithms, statistical modeling, and deep learning architectures relevant to NLP.
• Experience with data annotation, corpus creation, and evaluation methodologies for NLP tasks.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to work with complex datasets.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, crucial for a hybrid role based in Pretoria, Gauteng.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) is a plus.

Benefits

• An annual salary ranging from R .
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance plans.
• Generous paid time off, including vacation, sick leave, and public holidays.
• Opportunities for continuous professional development and attending AI conferences.
• Access to advanced computing resources and a collaborative research environment.
• Hybrid work flexibility that balances office collaboration with remote convenience in Pretoria, Gauteng.
• Employee assistance programs and wellness initiatives.