Director of Research - Computational Linguist

Are you passionate about empowering underserved communities and making a lasting impact? If so, we have an electrifying opportunity for you!

Our NYC-based client empowers underserved populations through innovative solutions that transcend barriers, promote positive change, and improve lives.

Best-in-Class Benefits:

Our client values their employees’ time and efforts. Their competitive compensation of $110K -$160K annually (commensurate with experience, education, and location) and extensive benefits package, which enhances their commitment to your success, including:

• Comprehensive Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• 401K with employer contribution (even if the employee does not contribute)
• Flexible working location, remote-friendly (in the U.S.)
• Paid time off and sick days .

Plus, they work to maintain the best possible environment for their employees, where people can learn and grow with the company. They strive to provide a collaborative environment where everyone feels encouraged to contribute to their processes, decisions, planning, and culture.

To help our client enter the next growth phase, they seek an experienced Computational Linguist to join their team of like-minded changemakers. You will get to develop cutting-edge proposals that solve real-world problems, serve as Principal Investigator for one or more funded projects, and contribute to a growing portfolio of NIH-supported grants that address systemic barriers facing underserved and vulnerable populations. This role will involve designing and enhancing language technologies to support our mission of empowering underserved communities. Your work will contribute to expanding the evidence base across multiple disciplines and advancing the current state of the science. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in linguistics and computer science, with experience in developing and implementing natural language processing (NLP), machine translation, and/or text-to-speech solutions, as well as experience with prompt engineering (creating and optimizing scripts and text prompts for AI systems to draft a wide range of content for the company’s products).

While our client is headquartered in NYC, this position can be remote within the United States.

To Thrive, You Also Should Have:

• PhD, MD, or comparable credentials preferred in Computational Linguistics, Computer Science, Linguistics, or a related field.
• Proven track record of developing and deploying NLP applications, preferably in K-12 or healthcare settings.
• Experience working with low-resource languages is highly desirable.
• Demonstrable experience serving as Principal Investigator or key personnel on funded grants, especially SBIR/STTR.
• Expertise in designing and implementing research protocols, mastery of quantitative and qualitative data collection methodologies, and familiarity with human subjects research considerations.
• Exceptional project management abilities, organizational and team management skills, clear-mindedness and focused discipline for navigating multiple competing priorities, extremely strong oral and written communication competence, and meticulous attention to detail.
• Proficiency in programming languages such as Python, Java, or C++.
• Strong understanding of machine learning techniques and frameworks (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch).
• Experience with NLP libraries and tools (e.g., NLTK, SpaCy, OpenNLP).
• Familiarity with speech processing technologies and tools.

Your Specific Responsibilities as the Computational Linguist - Director of Research Will Include:

NLP Development

• Design, develop, and refine NLP algorithms and models for language processing tasks such as machine translation, parsing/chunking, speech recognition, and text-to-speech synthesis.
• Create tools for language understanding and generation tailored to the needs of non-English-speaking users in healthcare and educational contexts.

Language Resource Development/Prompt Engineering

• Develop and curate linguistic resources for target languages, including lexicons, grammars, and corpora.
• Annotate and preprocess linguistic data to train and evaluate NLP models.
• Create and optimize scripts and text prompts for AI systems to draft a wide range of content for the product lines.

System Integration

• Integrate NLP/AI-supported components into our technology products, ensuring seamless user experiences.
• Collaborate with software engineers, UX designers, and domain experts to implement and test language solutions.

Research and Evaluation

• Stay current with advancements in computational linguistics, AI, and NLP.
• Be an integral member of our Grants and Research Team, carry out rigorous study protocols by the highest scientific standards, and ensure that research findings are translated into actionable insights for our Product and Engineering Team, Marketing and Sales Team, and other internal stakeholders.
• Secure funding for developing, piloting, and evaluating new products, apply our highly effective proposal development process to submit approximately 3 high-caliber proposals each year and serve as Principal Investigator on funded proposals you have developed.
• Continuously augment our evidence base and serve as a subject matter expert to disseminate our work through peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, webinars, white papers, and case studies.

Collaboration and Outreach

• Work closely with healthcare professionals and educators to understand their language-related challenges and requirements.
• Collaborate with linguistic communities to ensure culturally and contextually appropriate language solutions.
• Advocate for the needs of multilingual communities in technology development discussions.
• Build and maintain a robust network of pilot study partners, including academic institutions, community-based organizations, and healthcare delivery facilities such as hospital networks and FQHCs, to conduct the research in real-world settings.

More about our client:

Operating as a venture studio, our client follows a disciplined approach to turning ideas into products and a rigorous process to evaluate their impact. Their product portfolio supports healthcare professionals and K-12 educators in overcoming communication barriers and equity challenges to better serve diverse communities.

One product disseminates personalized messages and leverages the power of tailored rewards to reduce medical appointment no-shows. Another product supports language development, early literacy, and home-school connections through an online bilingual education platform where children and adults can read stories together in customized blends of two languages. Another product enables health systems to address language barriers and provide the best care for patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) through cutting-edge products to train, recognize, and support bilingual healthcare professionals.

Our client is an equal opportunity employer that welcomes and encourages diversity in the workplace. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, marital status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic information, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or any other status protected under federal, state, or local law.