Applied Linguist (Hourly)

2 Months ago • All levels • Localization • $60 PA - $80 PA

Job Summary

Job Description

Deepgram is seeking an Applied Linguist to enhance the quality and usability of their multilingual speech AI products, including STT, TTS, and voice agents. The role involves ensuring global offerings are accurate and culturally attuned by curating linguistic data, designing benchmarks, collaborating with experts, and partnering with product, research, and engineering teams. Responsibilities include developing linguistic datasets, designing benchmarking frameworks, analyzing model behaviors, coordinating with native speakers and localization experts, creating annotation guidelines, and ensuring multilingual labeling quality. The ideal candidate should be passionate about linguistics and technology, committed to making speech technology work across many languages, detail-oriented, collaborative, and enjoy seeing linguistic decisions impact live products.
Must have:
  • Degree in Linguistics, Computational Linguistics, NLP, or related field
  • Hands-on experience creating or curating language resources
  • Working knowledge of multiple languages or ability to analyze new ones
  • Experience with Python, regular expressions, Pandas, spaCy, or NLTK
  • Comfort using LLMs or AI tools for linguistic workflows
  • Experience with text normalization and mixed-language scenarios
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills
Good to have:
  • Familiarity with AI speech systems (phonetics, prosody, disfluencies)
  • Experience designing evaluation frameworks for speech or NLP models
  • History of working with native speaker consultants or localization partners
  • Commitment to fairness, accessibility, and cultural nuance in AI

Job Details

Company Overview

Deepgram is the leading voice AI platform for developers building speech-to-text (STT), text-to-speech (TTS) and full speech-to-speech (STS) offerings. 200,000+ developers build with Deepgram’s voice-native foundational models – accessed through APIs or as self-managed software – due to our unmatched accuracy, latency and pricing. Customers include software companies building voice products, co-sell partners working with large enterprises, and enterprises solving internal voice AI use cases. The company ended 2024 cash-flow positive with 400+ enterprise customers, 3.3x annual usage growth across the past 4 years, over 50,000 years of audio processed and over 1 trillion words transcribed. There is no organization in the world that understands voice better than Deepgram

Deepgram is looking for an Applied Linguist to elevate the quality, authenticity, and usability of our multilingual speech AI products—including STT, TTS, and voice agents. You’ll go beyond language availability to ensure our global offerings are accurate, expressive, and culturally attuned. From conversational cues to regional norms, you’ll help shape how Deepgram understands and interacts with the world’s languages. This includes curating and analyzing linguistic data, designing culturally sensitive benchmarks, collaborating with native speakers and domain experts, and partnering cross-functionally with product, research, and engineering. If you’re passionate about linguistics, technology, and building truly global products, this is a high-impact role at the intersection of all three.

What You’ll Do

  • Develop and maintain linguistic datasets that power multilingual features (e.g., formatting, fillers, entity recognition, culturally-based formalities).

  • Design culturally and linguistically grounded benchmarking frameworks for our AI products and systems.

  • Analyze language-specific model behaviors and guide improvements based on linguistic diagnostics.

  • Coordinate with native speakers, localization experts, and contractors to ensure naturalness and cultural appropriateness.

  • Create and maintain annotation guidelines, pronunciation lexicons, and text normalization rules.

  • Work with Data Operations and Labeling teams to ensure multilingual labeling quality.

  • Partner with Research and Product to test new languages and features from a linguistic perspective.

  • Provide ongoing QA for multilingual models and contribute to internal documentation for model behavior.

You’ll Love This Role If You

  • Believe that great AI must understand everyone, everywhere.

  • Are energized by the challenge of making speech technology work well across many languages.

  • Take pride in linguistic detail and know how to scale language support with practical creativity.

  • Thrive on collaboration with engineers, researchers, and annotators alike.

  • Get joy from seeing your linguistic decisions reflected in live products used by global customers.

It’s Important To Us That You Have

  • A degree in Linguistics, Computational Linguistics, NLP, a related field, or proven experience working in these fields

  • Hands-on experience creating or curating language resources (e.g., corpora, lexicons, annotation guidelines) for applied use.

  • Working knowledge of multiple languages or a demonstrated ability to analyze unfamiliar linguistic systems quickly and effectively.

  • Practical experience writing, maintaining, and debugging tools for linguistic data analysis—using Python, regular expressions, and libraries like Pandas, spaCy, or NLTK.

  • Comfort using LLMs or other AI tools to prototype, extend, or refine linguistic workflows.

  • Experience with text normalization, transliteration, and standardization of mixed-language scenarios (e.g., Spanglish, code-switching) in real-world product applications.

  • A track record of contributing to or improving team-owned tools, workflows, or pipelines.

  • Strong written and verbal communication skills, especially when collaborating with cross-functional teams including engineers, researchers, and product managers.

It Would Be Great if You Had

  • Familiarity with AI speech systems, including the linguistic challenges of modeling phonetics, prosody, and disfluencies.

  • Experience designing or contributing to evaluation frameworks for speech or NLP models, especially across multiple languages.

  • A history of working with native speaker consultants, annotators, or localization partners to ensure cultural and linguistic accuracy.

  • A commitment to fairness, accessibility, and cultural nuance in building global AI products.

Backed by prominent investors including Y Combinator, Madrona, Tiger Global, Wing VC and NVIDIA, Deepgram has raised over $85 million in total funding. If you're looking to work on cutting-edge technology and make a significant impact in the AI industry, we'd love to hear from you!

Deepgram is an equal opportunity employer. We want all voices and perspectives represented in our workforce. We are a curious bunch focused on collaboration and doing the right thing. We put our customers first, grow together and move quickly. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, pregnancy, parental status, genetic information, political affiliation, or any other status protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate.

We are happy to provide accommodations for applicants who need them.

Similar Jobs

velotio technologies  - Technical Project Manager

velotio technologies

Pune, Maharashtra, India (Remote)
3 Weeks ago
Discord - Senior Developer Analytics Manager

Discord

San Francisco, California, United States (On-Site)
1 Month ago
Electronic Arts - Senior Publishing Manager

Electronic Arts

Singapore, Singapore (On-Site)
4 Months ago
SSC Technologies - Senior Java Developer

SSC Technologies

Windsor, Connecticut, United States (On-Site)
1 Year ago
Keywords Studios - Expert Subtitle Translator/QCer: English to Hungarian

Keywords Studios

Hungary (Remote)
3 Months ago
Altagram Group - Localization Engineer

Altagram Group

Berlin, Berlin, Germany (On-Site)
2 Months ago
Toast - Bilingual Spanish Emerging Markets Manager

Toast

San Diego, California, United States (On-Site)
1 Month ago
Capgemini - Japanese translator

Capgemini

Gurugram, Haryana, India (On-Site)
2 Months ago
Lilt - French Language Lead Linguist

Lilt

Paris, Île-de-France, France (Remote)
1 Month ago

Get notifed when new similar jobs are uploaded

Similar Skill Jobs

Playstation - Senior Director, Multiplatform & Account Management

Playstation

San Mateo, California, United States (Remote)
3 Weeks ago
Triple dot studios - Business Analyst

Triple dot studios

London, England, United Kingdom (Hybrid)
1 Month ago
CityBlock - Senior Manager, Hub Operations

CityBlock

North Carolina, United States (Hybrid)
2 Weeks ago
ShyftLabs - Senior Backend Developer

ShyftLabs

Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India (On-Site)
9 Months ago
CapSpire - Senior Consultant – Endur Technical

CapSpire

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India (Remote)
9 Months ago
Scale AI - Revenue Operations Manager

Scale AI

San Francisco, California, United States (On-Site)
3 Months ago
Shield AI - Senior Staff Engineer, DevOps/Infrastructure (R3570)

Shield AI

San Diego, California, United States (On-Site)
2 Weeks ago
HopSkipDrive - Metro Service Manager

HopSkipDrive

Michigan, United States (Remote)
3 Weeks ago
Adyen - Banking Operations Specialist

Adyen

Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands (On-Site)
2 Months ago
Sportradar - Product Manager Player Insights (CRM)

Sportradar

Athens, Greece (Hybrid)
1 Month ago

Get notifed when new similar jobs are uploaded

Jobs in Worldwide

Looks like we're out of matches

Set up an alert and we'll send you similar jobs the moment they appear!

Localization Jobs

Blinkhealth - Bilingual Korean - Customer Support Specialist

Blinkhealth

Chesterfield, Missouri, United States (On-Site)
3 Weeks ago
Lilt - Māori Linguist

Lilt

New Zealand (Remote)
1 Month ago
Keywords Studios - Korean to English (US) Game Translator

Keywords Studios

(Remote)
2 Months ago
Toast - Bilingual Mandarin Northern New Jersey Emerging Markets Account Executive

Toast

Hackensack, New Jersey, United States (Hybrid)
1 Month ago
Haleon - Bilingual CMC Regulatory Affairs Manager

Haleon

Mississauga, Ontario, Canada (Hybrid)
1 Year ago
Kin. - Bilingual Licensed Customer Service Agent

Kin.

United States (Remote)
1 Month ago
Tencent - Game Localization PM

Tencent

Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China (On-Site)
2 Months ago
Nintendo - Senior Program Administration Coordinator (Bilingual Spanish)

Nintendo

Redmond, Washington, United States (Hybrid)
8 Months ago
Toast - Bilingual Spanish Los Angeles Emerging Markets Account Executive

Toast

Los Angeles, California, United States (Remote)
1 Month ago
Lilt - Medical Translator

Lilt

Taiwan (Remote)
9 Months ago

Get notifed when new similar jobs are uploaded

About The Company

Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States (Remote)

California, United States (Remote)

(Remote)

California, United States (Remote)

California, United States (Remote)

's-Hertogenbosch, North Brabant, Netherlands (Remote)

California, United States (Remote)

California, United States (Remote)

View All Jobs

Get notified when new jobs are added by Deepgram

Level Up Your Career in Game Development!

Transform Your Passion into Profession with Our Comprehensive Courses for Aspiring Game Developers.

Job Common Plug