27.944, Jobs: UK English; Computational Linguistics; General Linguistics; Phonetics; Phonology: TTS Linguist, Amazon.com / Ivona Software

Tue Feb 23 16:15:14 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-944. Tue Feb 23 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.944, Jobs: UK English; Computational Linguistics; General Linguistics; Phonetics; Phonology: TTS Linguist, Amazon.com / Ivona Software

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Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2016 11:15:03
From: Marco Nicolis [nicolism at amazon.com]
Subject: UK English; Computational Linguistics; General Linguistics; Phonetics; Phonology: TTS Linguist, Amazon.com / Ivona Software, Gdansk, Pomorskie, Poland

University or Organization: Amazon.com / Ivona Software 
Job Location: Gdansk, Pomorskie, Poland 
Job Title: TTS Linguist (UK English)
Job Rank: Other; TTS Linguist

Specialty Areas: Computational Linguistics; General Linguistics; Phonetics; Phonology 

Required Language(s): English (eng)

Description:

TTS linguist (UK English)

IVONA Software is one of Amazon’s top notch development centers. IVONA
researches, develops and delivers cutting edge multi-language Text to Speech
technology, leading in voice quality, accuracy and ease of use.

As part of our development team you will work within the Amazon Digital
Products department. This department has developed significant digital
businesses including Amazon MP3, Amazon Video on Demand, IMDB, Amazon Fire TV,
the Kindle Fire and our recently released Amazon Echo.

IVONA is a team of creative people who successfully combine passion and
ambition in creating one of the best speech synthesizers in the world, and now
are one of the most visible teams within Amazon where you will get the chance
to have a huge influence on making a positive impact on customers all over the
globe.

At Amazon, we take pride in building complete end-to-end solutions, staring
from researching a problem, implementing the solution, building a scalable and
reliable service and ensuring the service is there when you need it.

This position is based at IVONA headquarters in Gdansk, Poland.

As a TTS Linguist you will work alongside Software Developers who are subject
matter experts in speech synthesis and related fields. You are expected to
have solid knowledge of linguistics, in particular knowledge of
phonetics/phonology. You will be working on a variety of tasks to improve
natural language processing of TTS (text-to-speech). You will actively
collaborate with Software Developers with linguistic expertise throughout the
whole language and voice building process at Ivona/Amazon. 

Project duration: 9-18 months, with the possibility of turning the position
into a permanent one.

The tasks include:

- Normalizing textual resources through regular expressions.
- Creating natural language test cases for natural language processing
modules.
- Labeling text with semantic, syntactic and morphological features
- Annotating lexicon entries according to guidelines.
- Producing / validating phonetic transcriptions for UK English.
- QA of TTS voices and linguistic data.

Basic qualifications:

- Native-level proficiency in UK English.
- Degree in Linguistics, with specialization in Phonology, Computational
linguistics or similar.
- Solid knowledge of regular expressions.
- Solid knowledge of phonetics and phonology.
- Ability to create / fix phonetic transcriptions for UK English.
- Knowledge of Unix/Linux command line tools.

Preferred qualifications:

- Knowledge of scripting languages (e.g. Perl, Python).
- Familiarity with software version control tools (e.g. Git).
- Solid communication skills.
- Strong personal interest in learning, researching, and creating new
technologies related to foreign languages, linguistics, phonetics, phonology
and language technology.
- Comfortable working in a fast paced, highly collaborative, dynamic work
environment.

Application Deadline: 31-May-2016 (Open until filled)

Email Address for Applications: nicolism at amazon.com 
Contact Information:
	Marco Nicolis 
	Email: nicolism at amazon.com 

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