Arabic Linguist AI & TTS

About Unifonic

Unifonic is an AI-native customer experience platform designed for emerging markets, recognized as a Great Place to Work®. With over 25 years of conversational AI research and development, Unifonic serves more than 5,000 enterprises across MENA, pioneering sovereign, agentic AI through its Agentic Studio platform. The company fosters an environment of creativity, collaboration, and innovation, with team members acting as shareholders who contribute to shaping the future of communication technology.

The Role of Arabic Linguist – AI & TTS

Unifonic is seeking an Arabic Linguist to join its Text-to-Speech (TTS) team. This part-time role, based in Riyadh, Riyadh Province, involves providing linguistic analysis, Arabic dialect expertise, and support for pronunciation and speech-quality evaluation. The linguist will contribute to voice-related projects, working closely with the AI and TTS teams to enhance the quality, accuracy, and naturalness of Arabic speech technology in production projects.

Key Responsibilities

• Conduct research on the phonological, morphological, and syntactic structures of Arabic, focusing on Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Saudi/Gulf dialects, particularly the Najdi dialect, and provide linguistic guidance for their integration into Sestek products.
• Serve as a linguistic point of contact for the R&D / AI team, translating linguistic requirements into clear, 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 when needed.
• 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 when needed, 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.

Qualifications and Requirements

• 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 also 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.
• Ability to work on a part-time basis and collaborate remotely with teams based in Türkiye and Saudi Arabia.

Work Environment

This is a part-time position based in Riyadh, offering the flexibility to collaborate remotely with teams located in Türkiye and Saudi Arabia. The role involves working within the Engineering team, which is responsible for designing, developing, and maintaining the systems and technologies that drive Unifonic’s solutions.