Linguist II

About Ascendion

Ascendion is an AI-native software engineering disruptor helping businesses innovate faster, smarter, and with greater impact. We partner with enterprise clients across North America, the UK, Europe, and APAC to solve complex challenges in data, experience design, software product engineering, and workforce transformation. Powered by expert engineers, thousands of AI agents, and our Engineering to the Power of AI (EngineeringAI) method, we deliver measurable outcomes that build trust, unlock value, and accelerate growth.

Learn more at https://ascendion.com/

Engineering to the Power of AI™, AAVA™, EngineeringAI, Engineering to Elevate Life™, Enterprise PlatformsAI, Data & InsightsAI, ExperienceAI, GCCAI, OperationsAI, Platform EngineeringAI, ProductAI, and Quality EngineeringAI are trademarks or service marks of Ascendion®. AAVA™ is pending registration. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Ascendion | Engineering to elevate life

We have a culture built on opportunity, inclusion, and a spirit of partnership. Come, change the world with us:

Build the coolest tech for the world’s leading brands

Solve complex problems – and learn new skills

Experience the power of transforming digital engineering for Fortune 500 clients

Master your craft with leading training programs and hands-on experience

Experience a community of change makers!

Join a culture of high-performing innovators with endless ideas and a passion for tech. Our culture is the fabric of our company, and it is what makes us unique and diverse. The way we share ideas, learning, experiences, successes, and joy allows everyone to be their best at Ascendion.

About the role:

We are looking for a linguist to help develop language components for AI-powered products, including large language models (LLMs) and voice-enabled technologies.

We are seeking candidates with solid linguistic data analysis skills, programming familiarity, and language technology experience to contribute to data collection, synthetic data generation, and annotation tasks in support of LLM/AI training, evaluation, alignment, and AI agent development.

Job Title : Linguist II

Key Responsibilities:

Apply linguistic expertise in syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics to support LLM and generative AI systems

Collaborate with linguists, data operations teams, and Machine Learning (ML) engineers on data collection, curation, annotation, and localization efforts for model training and fine-tuning

Contribute to the development and maintenance of annotation schemas and guidelines for LLM training data (e.g., instruction-tuning, preference labeling, Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback [RLHF])

Evaluate and quality-check datasets used for pre-training, fine-tuning, and alignment of language models

Support the development of programmatic methods for generating synthetic annotated data at scale

Assist in model evaluation efforts including prompt-based testing, red-teaming, and linguistic error analysis

Participate in experiments to assess data quality, annotation consistency, and downstream model performance

Minimum Qualifications:

Bachelor's degree in Linguistics, Computational Linguistics, Computer Science, Speech Science, or related field

2+ years of experience in Linguistics, Language Technologies, Natural Language Processing (NLP), or AI/ Machine Learning (ML) data operations (or equivalent)

Native or near-native fluency in English and at least one additional language

Knowledge of syntax, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics, and other areas of linguistics

Familiarity with Large Language Models (LLMs), their applications and data practices (training data, evaluation, prompting, fine-tuning)

Exposure to LLM evaluation methodologies (human evaluation, automated metrics, adversarial testing)

Experience working with semantic ontologies, taxonomies, or intent/slot frameworks

Proficiency using Artificial Intelligence (AI) Agents/Chatbots

Experience with database queries and data analysis processes (Structured Query Language [SQL], spreadsheets, R, Unix, or others)

Experience working with speech and text data in multiple languages

Comfortable working in a fast-paced, highly collaborative environment with evolving priorities

Preferred Qualifications:

Master's degree in Linguistics, Computational Linguistics, Language Technologies, or a related field

Familiarity with machine learning frameworks, NLP libraries, and tools (e.g., Hugging Face, spaCy, Natural Language Toolkit [NLTK], PyTorch)

Exposure to statistical language modeling or training data pipelines

Strong organizational skills and attention to detail

Prior FAANG/Big Tech

Location: Onsite/Hybrid in one of these offices [New York, NY / Burlingame, CA / Redmond, WA]

Salary Range: The salary for this position is between $68,640 – $118,560 annually. Factors which may affect pay within this range may include geography/market, skills, education, experience, and other qualifications of the successful candidate.

Benefits : The Company offers the following benefits for this position, subject to applicable eligibility requirements: [medical insurance] [dental insurance] [vision insurance] [401(k) retirement plan] [long-term disability insurance] [short-term disability insurance] [5 personal days accrued each calendar year. The Paid time off benefits meet the paid sick and safe time laws that pertains to the City/ State] [10-15 days of paid vacation time] [6 paid holidays and 1 floating holiday per calendar year] [Ascendion Learning Management System]

Want to change the world? Let us know.

Tell us about your experiences, education, and ambitions. Bring your knowledge, unique viewpoint, and creativity to the table. Let’s talk!

Preferred Skills

Linguistics

Natural Language Processing (NLP)

AI/ML

SQL

Data analysis

Python/Pytorch

Job details

Job ID

332575

Job Requirements

Linguist II

Location

Redmond, Washington, US

Recruiter

Chirag

Email

chirag.balani@ascendion.com

About Ascendion

Ascendion is a full-service digital engineering solutions company. We make and manage software platforms and products that power growth and deliver captivating experiences to consumers and employees.

Our engineering, cloud, data, experience design, and talent solution capabilities accelerate transformation and impact for enterprise clients. Headquartered in New Jersey, our workforce of 6,000+ Ascenders delivers solutions from around the globe. Ascendion is built differently to engineer the next.