In A Nutshell
Identify and lead technical experiments and work with product, engineering, and subject matter experts across WRI to turn successful experiments into useful tools and user-facing products.
Responsibilities
Design, Implementing and Evaluating Language Technology Experiments (60%):
- Evaluate user needs and explore use cases for language technology across WRI’s research and product portfolios in collaboration with Data Lab’s Product Studio.
- Set the overall research and development strategy for language technology at WRI including LLMs and traditional NLP approaches in collaboration with the Data Lab’s Global Director and/or their designee.
- Identify and initiate a selection of experiments with internal partners from WRI’s Programs and Country Offices.
- Evaluate the results of the experiments and iterate to improve promising outcomes and learn from unsuccessful outcomes.
- Manage, mentor, and advise data scientists using language technology across the Data Lab, helping them solve technical challenges and build capacity.
- Serve as the external face of WRI’s work on language technology, representing the organization at relevant sector and industry conferences.
Advise on the Productization of Successful Experiments (30%):
- Communicate experimentation efforts to the Data Lab’s Product and Engineering Teams and internal partners to help them understand the current state of the art and future trajectory for language technology.
- Integrate feedback from Product teams into the design of experiments, solving issues identified via the productization process.
- Analyze and recommend infrastructure design and strategic approaches for transitioning successful prototypes into scalable products, focusing on cost-effectiveness, environmental impact, privacy, and security.
Guide Responsible Use of Language Technology at WRI (10%):
- Complete quarterly updates to WRI’s Generative AI guidance for staff in collaboration with WRI’s Research Integrity team.
- Contribute to scoping and strategy efforts with Data Lab’s internal clients across Programs and Country Offices and external partners.
Skillset
- You have a completed a bachelor’s degree in statistics, computer science, data science, or linguistics. Relevant work experience in lieu of degree is accepted.
- You have a minimum of 10 years of full-time relevant experience including at least 3 as team leader, principal investigator or equivalent.
- Experience in the following is preferred:
- Strong understanding of machine learning, NLP, and LLM fundamentals including transformers.
- Ability to conceptualize and execute projects that leverage language technology to help users in the real world.
- Experience conducting designing and developing small applications using a range of coding languages, APIs, and frameworks for language technology.
- Experience using LLM-focused methods including prompt engineering, tool calling, retrieval augmented generation, and fine-tuning to improve existing models.
- Experience developing and implementing evaluations for models and applications across a range of NLP and LLM tasks.
- Sound judgement about data governance and ethics.
- Understanding of the cost structures and implications of deploying language technologies at scale.
- Ability to think holistically about data product pipelines from initial data collection to UX design.
- Experience working across data science, product, and engineering teams.