Applied Researcher - NLP

About the Role

Join Wordly's fast-growing global team! We are looking for an applied researcher with an AI/ML background and an interest in NLP to join our new R&D division. You will be part of a small but mighty team of researchers focused on keeping Wordly competitive in an ever-changing market.

Responsibilities

• Explore novel approaches to real-world problems that Wordly customers face.
• Develop and prototype new algorithms and solutions.
• Collaborate with researchers in academia and industry to push the state of the art of real-time translation forward.
• Stay up to date on all of the exciting research that’s coming out in AI.
• Contribute to publications and patents as needed.
• Work with Product Engineering to transform proven solutions into production-ready code.
• Read academic literature and stay up to date on the state of the art as it relates to real-time translation services.
• Prototype novel solutions for real-world problems that Wordly users may face or for new features that may enhance Wordly’s offerings.
• Distill highly technical solutions for non-technical audiences.
• Work with engineers to take research prototypes into production-ready code.
• Help write academic papers and patents as needed.
• Collaborate with university and industry researchers on potential solutions, taking IP needs into account.
• Mentor junior researchers and interns.
• Positively contribute to Wordly’s engineering culture and processes to maintain a cooperative and supportive environment for all.

About You

• You can work independently but value collaboration and care about your team.
• You mentor junior researchers and interns and love sharing your knowledge.
• You can make highly technical solutions digestible to others, and understand both the advantages and drawbacks of a potential solution.
• You’re adaptable and can identify when a potential path isn’t worth the time investment.
• You value applied over theoretical solutions and ground your research in real-world needs.

Minimum Qualifications

• Masters + 3 years of experience, or PhD in Computer Science or related field with a focus on AI / ML, robotics, HCI, NLP, etc.
• Strong programming skills.
• Ability to comprehend academic publications and reproduce results.
• Strong technical writing skills and ability to write academic publications.
• Strong communication skills and ability to distill technical concepts down to a non-technical audience.
• Experienced in mentoring junior colleagues with respect to their technical skills.
• Self-motivated and able to work independently with minimal supervision.
• Can take initiative and make informed decisions as needed.
• Strong problem-solving skills. Can devise creative solutions and workarounds when problems arise.
• Comfortable working with a fully remote team.

Desired Qualifications

• Strong publication background.
• Experience with the patent process.
• Experience in processing real-time media streams, especially audio streams.
• Solid understanding of various digital audio concepts (e.g., encoding/decoding, sample rates, FFTs, compression, filtering, etc.).
• Solid understanding of text-to-speech generation processes.
• Up to date on state-of-the-art LLM and genAI technologies.
• Strong understanding of benchmarking and evaluation frameworks.
• Understanding of how to qualitatively and quantitatively evaluate user experience.

Company Information

Located in Los Altos, California, Wordly is an exciting tech startup that is looking to grow its engineering and GTM teams! From virtual meetings to large, in-person conference venues, Wordly strives to provide high-quality, real-time translation services in 50+ languages to anyone, anywhere. Wordly caters to numerous customers around the world which include local organizations and businesses; government entities; Fortune 500 companies; and more.

Employment Details

• Employment Type: FullTime
• Location Type: Remote