Contract length: 12 months with possible renewal, funding contingent
Hours: 50%
Location: Flexible; home-based (working hours UTC ±3)
Travel: Occasional
Reporting to: Tech Manager
Remuneration: 4,500 - 5,000 USD/month (FTE; prorated to part-time hours)
Application deadline: 30 September, 2025
CLEAR Global is an equal-opportunity employer, committed to having a diverse team where individuals of all backgrounds collaborate and learn from one another. We believe we can be most effective with diverse experience and expertise in our team. We recruit on merit, actively seek diverse applicant pools and encourage candidates of all backgrounds to apply. We do not discriminate on the basis of disability, age, gender identity and expression, national origin, race and ethnicity, religious beliefs, marital or parental status, or sexual orientation, and welcome all types of diversity.
We offer in addition to salary:
- an innovative work environment with a diverse and passionate team,
- 20 days of annual leave and 10 days of floating holidays (pro-rated),
- the flexibility of home-based/remote work,
- accommodation and per diem when on deployment.
The Role
The Computational Linguist plays a central role in ensuring that CLEAR Global’s language technology initiatives harness state-of-the-art approaches while remaining grounded in linguistic diversity, accuracy, and ethical practice. Working closely with developers, linguists and global partners, the Computational Linguist leads the design and evaluation of language data collection for MT and speech-based models, guides model training and fine-tuning, and supports the outreach activities of CLEAR Global. The Computational Linguist will also provide insights on language-specific considerations that inform both programmatic and technical decisions.
Responsibilities
These responsibilities describe a set of potential tasks that this role will be asked to fulfill but will likely not all be concurrent.
Linguistic Data Design and Evaluation
- Design data collection protocols and annotation guidelines for speech and text datasets, ensuring linguistic coverage across phonology, syntax, and morphology.
- Guide creation of speech corpora (for ASR and TTS) and parallel corpora (for MT), including language selection, sentence structure design, and linguistic variation.
- Guide on the development of evaluation datasets and linguistic benchmarks tailored to low-resource language contexts.
- Contribute to the publication of datasets on Hugging Face, including the preparation of clear and accurate data cards, metadata, and linguistic documentation.
Collaboration and Capacity Building
- Train and support linguists, annotators, and language community members on best practices for data collection and transcription.
- Work collaboratively with internal teams (engineering, research, community) and external partners to align on linguistic needs and technical feasibility.
Advisory, Strategic Support, and Representation
- Collaborate with team members on language prioritization for data and model development, including analysis of resource availability and linguistic complexity, and strategic discussions related to language technology.
- Provide input into proposals, donor reports, and project documentation with clear and realistic technical advice.
- Represent CLEAR Global at relevant conferences, workshops, and community events, sharing insights, research findings, and promoting the organization’s mission.
Model Training and Integration
- Train, fine-tune, and evaluate language models, ASR, TTS, or MT models in collaboration with team members.
- Support integration of trained models into CLEAR Global’s platforms, advising on language-specific implementation challenges.
- Help interpret model outputs and identify linguistic patterns or issues that affect performance.
Large Language Model (LLM) Utilization
- Evaluate and adapt existing large language models (LLMs) for applicability to CLEAR Global’s linguistic, humanitarian, and development contexts.
- Design methodologies for safely and effectively incorporating LLMs into language services workflows.
- Support the integration of LLM-based solutions into CLEAR Global platforms, ensuring efficiency and usability for both internal teams and external partners.
Please note that these responsibilities may evolve over time as the role adapts to emerging technologies and program needs.
Qualifications
You should be enthusiastic about the importance of increasing access to knowledge through language. The right candidate is an energetic team player, flexible and dynamic in approach, who agrees with CLEAR Global’s basic beliefs and values and who can work remotely with team members based throughout the world.
Required
- 5+ years of experience in computational linguistics or natural language processing, language technology/AI and language data curation.
- Strong background in linguistics, including phonetics/phonology, morphology, syntax, and typological variation.
- Experience designing or evaluating language datasets for ASR, TTS, or MT technologies.
- Experience in evaluating, fine-tuning, and adapting state-of-the-art large language models (LLMs), small language models (SLMs), ASR, TTS and MT models for multilingual and low-resource contexts.
- Familiarity with low-resource languages and inclusive practices and ethical considerations in language data collection, specific to the African continent.
- Active involvement and extensive network in local Sub-Saharan Africa NLP communities and research initiatives.
- Motivated by building tools that make a difference
- Willingness to travel occasionally and support data collection initiatives in multilingual settings.
- Fluency in a Sub-Saharan Africa language.
Desirable
- Proficiency in annotation tools such as Prodigy and Label Studio and basic scripting.
- Experience guiding or training field linguists, annotators, or community-based data collectors.
- Experience working with open-source platforms such as Hugging Face.
- Strong writing and speaking skills, especially for documentation, research reports, and open-source publications.
About CLEAR Global
CLEAR Global exists to help people get vital information, and be heard, whatever language they speak. We believe that everyone has the right to give and receive information in a language and format they understand. We work with nonprofit partners and a global community of language professionals to build local language translation capacity, and raise awareness of language barriers. Our network of over 100,000 community members translate millions of words of life-saving and life-changing information a year.
Core Values
CLEAR Global employees and volunteers are people who believe passionately about the value of this work and take personal responsibility for achieving the mission. CLEAR Global’s mission and organizational spirit embody the core values established in its strategic framework:
- Excellence: As the leading voice for communicating humanitarian information in the right language, CLEAR Global is a leader in the translation industry and in the nonprofit sector.
- Integrity: CLEAR Global believes that every person, whether it’s the people who we serve, our volunteers or our staff, has value, deserves respect and has inherent dignity.
- Empowerment: CLEAR Global believes in using language to empower people around the world to control their own development and destiny.
- Innovation: CLEAR Global recognizes and celebrates the power of innovation to address humanitarian and crisis issues around the world.
- Sustainability: CLEAR Global recognizes that meeting our mission necessitates establishment and maintenance of a solid financial and organizational infrastructure.
- Tolerance: Our staff and volunteers are highly knowledgeable and skilled; value each other, our partner and our recipients; create a supportive work environment; and conduct themselves professionally at all times.
CLEAR Global may re-advertise the vacancy, cancel the recruitment, offer an appointment with a modified job description or for a different duration at its discretion.