Linguistics Expert (SME)

Purpose

We are seeking a highly experienced Linguistics professional consultant to serve as a consultant on AI training data projects for leading AI model builders and enterprises. Your focus will be to define success criteria, review outputs, and provide targeted guidance to improve quality and speed — directly contributing to the successful delivery of domain-specific annotated datasets that meet the highest technical standards. You will be engaged on specific projects with clearly defined deliverables, milestones, and end dates.

Components

Technical Standard Setting, Quality Control, and Process Improvement

• Define domain-specific quality success metrics (e.g., accuracy of transcription, consistency in linguistic annotation schemes, phonetic transcription accuracy, adherence to grammatical frameworks, correct use of linguistic markup standards such as IPA or Universal Dependencies).
• Develop project-specific SOPs, QA rubrics, and reference materials for the specific purpose of meeting client technical standards.
• Review project outputs (transcriptions, annotations, language datasets) against technical standards, flagging and correcting defects before client delivery.
• Perform structured QA passes on daily/weekly deliverables; flag, track, and resolve defects quickly to hit delivery deadlines.
• Return work to contractors with precise remediation notes.
• Provide advisory input on tools, workflows, and processes to meet quality benchmarks.
• Handle spec changes and edge-case scenarios — e.g., annotation of rare dialects or ambiguous language constructs — drafting acceptance criteria or workarounds.
• Curate example libraries of “gold standard” linguistic data for calibration and comparability to agreed reference samples.

Talent Vetting & Output Improvement

• Participate in vetting and assessing technical contractor talent for specific projects, including transcription accuracy tests and linguistic annotation evaluations.
• Review sample work from contractors and provide precise, actionable written feedback to improve outputs.
• Create targeted training or calibration resources — e.g., phonetic transcription guidelines, morphological analysis instructions, disambiguation procedures.

Project Delivery Support

• Advise on technical scoping and requirements during project setup, including selection of annotation frameworks and language coverage specifications.
• Provide expert guidance for edge cases, technical exceptions, and specification changes.
• Contribute to post-project reviews to capture lessons learned and improve future standards.
• Identify and summarize client model observations and insights (e.g., frequent misannotations, language-specific bias patterns).
• Build dashboards or trackers with defect categories and recurrence to surface production insights that improve project outcomes.
• Conduct post-mortems, analyze defect trends, and propose process tweaks or training refreshers.

Target Profile

• Advanced degree (ideally PhD) in Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, or a closely related field, with demonstrable research or industry impact.
• 5+ years professional expertise in linguistic analysis, annotation standards, and language data quality control.
• Proven ability to set, enforce, and maintain high technical standards in linguistic data creation projects.
• Strong communication skills for delivering clear technical guidance.
• Experience producing technical documentation, quality rubrics, or training resources.
• Ability to work within fixed project timelines and scope.
• Strong attention to detail, documentation discipline, and commitment to accuracy and consistency.
• Fluency in spoken and written English, with additional language proficiency preferred.

Example Data Annotation - Potential Scope

Field of Study

Agent Task Specialty

Linguistics

Register/genre fit enforcement, dialect fidelity, orthography consistency

Sociolinguistics

Dialect/register policy setting, code-switch handling

Phonetics & Phonology

Transcription accuracy, disfluency policy, prosodic annotation

Applied Linguistics

Script/orthography/romanization standards, tokenization

Computational Linguistics

Named entity handling, punctuation conventions

Corpus Linguistics

Metadata completeness, defect tracking, IAA monitoring

Translation & Localization

Policy compliance checking, edge-case arbitration

Language Technology

Validator creation (regex/scripts), automation of QA checks

Psycholinguistics

Prompt/script design, scenario coverage

Language Documentation

Gold-standard library curation, reviewer calibration

Language Studies

Multiscript/multimodal transcription QA

We offer a pay range of $25-to- $100 per hour, with the exact rate determined after evaluating your experience, expertise, and geographic location. Final offer amounts may vary from the pay range listed above. As a contractor you’ll supply a secure computer and high‑speed internet; company‑sponsored benefits such as health insurance and PTO do not apply.

Job title: Linguistics Expert (SME)
Employment type: Contract
Workplace type: Remote
Seniority level: Senior Level