Language Engineer, Alexa Smart Home

Job description

DESCRIPTION

Are you a linguist with technical aptitude? Or are you an engineer with a passion for languages and linguistics? Come and join the Alexa Smart Home team which is focused on making Alexa the user interface for the home. From the simplest voice commands (turn on the lights, turn down the heat) to use cases spanning home security, home entertainment, and the home environment, we are evolving Alexa into intelligent, indispensable companion that automates daily routines, simplifies interaction with appliances and electronics, and alerts when something unusual is detected.

You will be part of a team delivering features that are highly anticipated by media and well received by our customers.

As a Language Engineer, you will work on design and implement NLU models that power Smart Home customers experience. You will lay the foundation to move from directed device interactions to learned behaviors that enable Alexa to proactively drive action on behalf
of the customer. And, you will have the satisfaction of working on a product your friends and family can relate to, and want to use every day. Like the world of smart phones less than 10 years ago, this is a rare opportunity to have a giant impact on the way people live.

Alexa Smart Home is looking for a Language Engineer with in linguistic annotation, ontologies, taxonomies and/or semantic schemata. We are seeking a candidate with strong analytical skills to measure, analyze and solve complex language technology problems

Specifically, the Language Engineer will:
· Provide day-to-day coordination of data collection efforts, including planning, scheduling, and reporting
· Measure and analyze accuracy and throughput of annotated data
· Contribute to the design of new features by extending existing annotation schemas to cover new areas
· Write grammars and build FSTs
· Use modeling tools to bootstrap new functionalities
· Handle multiple requests from a range of data customers
· Collaborate with other Language Engineers in data collection and feature design efforts

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

· Expertise in building ontologies, taxonomies, and semantic relation frameworks
· Comfortable working with speech and text language data in multiple languages
· Experience in writing grammars and building finite state transducers
· Experience with statistical language modeling
· Practical knowledge of version control and agile development
· Excellent communication, strong organizational skills and very detailed oriented
· Comfortable working in a fast paced, highly collaborative, dynamic work environment
· Willingness to support several projects at one time, and to accept reprioritization as necessary
· Fluency in one of the following languages: English and its locales (US, Canada, UK, India etc.), German and its locales (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), or Japanese is a plus

Desired profile

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS

· Bachelor’s or higher degree in a relevant field
· 4+ years in computational linguistics, language data processing, semantics, or syntax
· Experience with language annotation and other forms of data markup
· Experience with ontologies and other semantic meaning representation schemas
· Experience working with speech and text language data in multiple languages
· Experience with database queries and data analysis processes (SQL, R, Matlab, etc.), and Unix
· Experience programming in Python, Perl, or another scripting language
· Experience using data to support business decisions