Linguist

At Sonos we want to create the ultimate listening experience for our customers and know that it starts by listening to each other. As part of the Sonos team, you'll collaborate with people of all styles, skill sets, and backgrounds to realize our vision while fostering a community where everyone feels included and empowered to do the best work of their lives.

This role is a hybrid position

This position is considered hybrid, allowing for a combination of remote work and in-office collaboration. Qualified applicants must live within commuting distance of our Paris office location and should expect to be in office approximately 3 days per week.

What You'll Do

At the Sonos Voice Control team (SVC), we design the future of AI-based interactions that power music control and discovery for Sonos customers across all Sonos interfaces (Sonos smart speakers, Sonos app, Sonos voice assistant).

As a Linguist, you will own the localization of the Sonos voice assistant text and audio data into your language (Spanish or German), as well as its continuous improvement. You will also contribute to data production and maintenance for at least one other language. Additionally, you will support the training and supervision of fixed-term contract linguists and freelancers.

Your daily tasks will include:

• Understanding our voice use cases and supporting them within Sonos Voice Control to ensure a premium, intuitive and up-to-date voice experience

• Producing (or supervising the production of) the textual and audio data used to train and evaluate our machine learning models, including collaborating with data providers and writing data production specifications and guidelines

• Consistently ensuring a high level of data quality

• Performing error analysis and collaborating with other teams to resolve issues, which requires a strong understanding of our end-to-end ML pipeline

• Assessing the performance of our ML models before each new release of Sonos voice assistant, using internal quality evaluation tools

• Analyzing and incorporating user feedback to improve and refine our models

This role requires efficient cross-team collaboration and regular interaction with various partner teams, including other Machine Learning teams, UX, QA, and Embedded Engineering.

What You'll Need

Basic Qualifications 

• Master's degree (preferred) or Bachelor's degree in Linguistics or Natural Language Processing

• Native-level proficiency in German or Spanish

• Excellent command of English (B2 level or higher)

• Solid understanding of general linguistics as applied to your language

• Proficiency with spreadsheets for data management and basic statistical analysis

• Ability to understand formal representations and willingness to learn new technical tools and concepts

• Excellent organizational skills

• Strong attention to detail and ability to focus on precision-driven tasks

• Ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams and adapt to their needs

Preferred Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience as a linguist in the industry

• Familiarity with Natural Language Processing, regular expressions, and/or Unix-style command line

• Familiarity with Large Language Models and their use for data production

• High proficiency in another language (especially German, Italian, or Spanish)

• French language skills are a plus, but not required

Research shows that candidates from underrepresented backgrounds often don't apply for roles if they don't meet all the criteria. If you don't have 100% of the skills listed, we strongly encourage you to apply if interested.

Visa Sponsorship: Sonos is unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa for this role at this time. We ask that applicants be authorized to work for any French employer, both now and in the future.

#linguistics, #NLP, #voiceAI, #ParisJob, #LI-Hybrid

Your profile will be reviewed and you'll hear from us once we have an update. At Sonos we take the time to hire right and appreciate your patience.