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. The company focuses on pioneering sovereign, agentic AI through its Agentic Studio platform, fostering an environment that values creativity, collaboration, and innovation.

The Role of Arabic Linguist – AI & TTS

Unifonic is seeking an Arabic Linguist to join its team in Riyadh, Riyadh Province, on a part-time basis. This role involves supporting the Text-to-Speech (TTS) team with linguistic analysis, Arabic dialect expertise, pronunciation and speech-quality evaluation, and various voice-related projects. The Arabic Linguist will contribute linguistic expertise to production projects, aiming to enhance the quality, accuracy, and naturalness of Arabic speech technology.

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 the Najdi dialect.
• Provide linguistic guidance for the integration of Arabic structures into Sestek products.
• Serve 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 based on pronunciation accuracy, prosody, dialect authenticity, and naturalness, with a specific focus on Saudi Arabic.
• Offer linguistic guidance and support for Arabic voice data collection and speech synthesis projects, including identifying and onboarding suitable voice talents as needed.
• Support the coordination and review of voice recording and editing processes to ensure linguistic accuracy and consistency.
• Assist in 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 with the Sestek TTS and AI Research teams, providing ongoing linguistic expertise throughout projects.

Required Qualifications

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

Work Environment

The Engineering team at Unifonic is responsible for designing, developing, and maintaining the systems and technologies that drive Unifonic’s solutions. This role involves close collaboration with other departments to ensure products and services meet customer needs. The position is part-time and requires remote collaboration with international teams.