Arabic Linguist AI & TTS

About Unifonic and the Role

Unifonic, recognized as a Great Place to Work®, is an AI-native customer experience platform serving over 5,000 enterprises across MENA. The company focuses on conversational AI research and development, pioneering sovereign, agentic AI through its Agentic Studio platform. This part-time role for an Arabic Linguist is based in Riyadh, Riyadh Province, and involves supporting the Text-to-Speech (TTS) team with linguistic analysis and Arabic dialect expertise.

Role Overview

The Arabic Linguist will contribute linguistic expertise to production projects, focusing on improving the quality, accuracy, and naturalness of Arabic speech technology. This position requires strong expertise in Saudi Arabic dialects, with a preference for native or near-native proficiency in the Najdi dialect. The role involves close collaboration with the AI and TTS teams, providing guidance and support for various voice-related projects.

Key Responsibilities

• Conduct research on the phonological, morphological, and syntactic structures of Arabic, with a focus on Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Saudi/Gulf dialects, particularly Najdi.
• Provide linguistic guidance for the integration of Arabic structures into Sestek products.
• Act as a linguistic point of contact for the R&D / AI team, translating linguistic requirements into actionable input for engineers.
• Analyze and review pronunciation data, including grapheme-to-phoneme mappings, diacritization/tashkeel, and lexicons for Arabic TTS and speech recognition systems.
• Evaluate TTS output quality in terms of pronunciation accuracy, prosody, dialect authenticity, and naturalness, with a particular focus on Saudi Arabic.
• Provide linguistic guidance and support for Arabic voice data collection and speech synthesis projects, including identifying and onboarding suitable voice talents.
• Support the coordination and review of voice recording and editing processes to ensure linguistic accuracy and consistency.
• Support the onboarding and coordination of external Arabic language consultants, providing guidance on linguistic requirements.
• Review and provide linguistic feedback on data annotation activities and guidelines, ensuring appropriate quality standards for Arabic and Saudi dialect data.
• Collaborate closely with the Sestek TTS and AI Research teams, providing ongoing linguistic expertise throughout projects.

Required Qualifications and Skills

• Bachelor's degree in Linguistics, Arabic Language and Literature, Translation and Interpreting, or a related field.
• Native proficiency in Arabic, with a strong command of MSA and Saudi Arabic dialects. Native or near-native proficiency in the Najdi dialect is strongly preferred.
• Familiarity with Arabic dialects beyond Saudi Arabic is preferred.
• Strong knowledge of Arabic phonology and morphology, and familiarity with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
• Good command of English, as it will be the working language with the R&D / AI team.
• Strong communication skills and comfort working with technical, non-linguist colleagues.
• Familiarity with speech technologies (TTS/ASR), voice data collection, or NLP is a plus.
• Experience working with Saudi Arabic dialects, particularly the Najdi dialect, is highly preferred.

Work Environment

This is a part-time position that requires the ability to collaborate remotely with teams based in Türkiye and Saudi Arabia. The role is integral to the Engineering team, which is responsible for designing, developing, and maintaining Unifonic’s systems and technologies.

Application Information

Unifonic values creativity, collaboration, and innovation, welcoming diverse ideas. As shareholders, team members contribute to shaping the future of the company. Qualified candidates are encouraged to apply.