Software Engineer (NLP) – Ukraine Response

Contract length: 6 months with possible renewal, funding contingent

Hours: Full-time

Location: Flexible; home-based (working hours UTC ±3 )

Travel: Minimal

Reporting to: Product Manager – Ukraine Response

Remuneration: 3,800-4,500 USD/month

Application deadline: 20 February, 2023*

*Due to the urgency of this vacancy, screening and interviews will commence immediately and the candidate can be selected at any stage before the closing date.

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,
• the flexibility of home-based/remote work,
• accommodation and per diems when on deployment.

The Role

This role would initially focus on building solutions for the Ukrainian response team, with possible extension to productize solutions for use in other humanitarian contexts. The current project is a document retrieval system aimed at curating up-to-date information, from reliable sources, and providing it via channels and websites already popular with the affected people.

In this role, you will join the growing CLEAR Global tech team to work on projects requiring language technology such as voice or text enabled chatbots, machine translation and automatic speech recognition (ASR). The core of the role will be on maintaining the Natural Language Understanding (NLU) components and building applications using NLU pipelines, system integration and APIs. The role will participate in capacity building activities and collaboration with tech teams of various partners.

Responsibilities

(with mentorship and guidance from the CLEAR Global team):

• Design and develop natural language processing (NLP) models and components for various humanitarian use cases
• Implement, test, and deploy NLP models and components
• Communicate with local content teams around appropriate format and design for the technology, and sustain collaboration throughout the project
• Work closely with the Ukrainian response team to understand their needs and develop solutions to aid in their efforts
• Continuously improve models by monitoring performance and incorporating feedback
• Research and stay up-to-date on the latest NLP techniques and technologies
• Create and maintain technical documentation

These responsibilities are approximate and may change over time.

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.

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing or related field
• 3+ years of proven experience in NLP, including Natural Language Understanding (NLU)
• Willingness to work with under-resourced languages and non-Latin writing systems
• Practical machine learning experience with a good understanding of its underlying processes
• Strong programming skills in Python and experience with NLP libraries such as NLTK, spaCy, and scikit-learn
• Experience with deep learning frameworks such as TensorFlow and PyTorch a plus
• Experience with Haystack a plus
• Experience with handling language data (text and speech) a plus
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills
• Excellent working knowledge of written and spoken English
• Passion for making a positive impact in the world

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.