Lead Specialist, AI Scientist

AI Scientist / Engineer – Speech Language Model

Role Summary

The AI Scientist / Engineer – Speech Language Models leads the design, development, and

evaluation of AI systems for language assessment, real‑time feedback, and skills evaluation. The role

focuses on speech recognition, spoken language modeling, and automated scoring, ensuring models

are accurate, reliable, fair, and scalable across learner‑facing and hiring‑facing applications.

Key Responsibilities

•Design, build, and improve speech language models for spoken response understanding,

pronunciation analysis, fluency, prosody, and communicative effectiveness.

•Develop and evaluate automated scoring and feedback pipelines for speaking tasks used in:

• AI‑driven speaking practice with instant feedback (learner‑facing).
• Job‑relevant oral communication and soft‑skills assessments (hiring‑facing).

•Train, fine‑tune, and evaluate acoustic models, cascading models, speech-to-speech models,

speech LMs, and scoring models, including neural and large language model–based

approaches.

•Design experiments and conduct quantitative performance, reliability, and validity analyses to

ensure assessment quality and decision integrity.

•Work across a range of speaking constructs such as interactional competence, pragmatic

competence, spoken critical thinking skills etc.

•Perform detailed error analysis, intra- and inter-agent rater reliability studies on ASR outputs,

spoken features, and scoring behaviors to guide model and product improvements.

•Collaborate with product, UX, and assessment scientists to integrate models into interactive

experiences such as practice simulations, and hiring workflows.

•Apply responsible AI principles to speech systems, including fairness across accents, dialects,

and proficiency levels, as well as transparency of feedback and scores.

•Support model monitoring and governance in production environments, ensuring ongoing

quality and compliance for high‑stakes use cases.

•Act as the technical lead for an AI conversational assessment product, partnering closely with

a Product Manager to translate assessment goals, user needs, and business constraints into

model and system design decisions.•Shape end‑to‑end conversational assessment design (task structure, prompts, turn‑taking,

scoring logic, feedback timing) in collaboration with product and assessment stakeholders.

•Balance assessment validity, user experience, system latency, and scalability when making

model and system design trade‑offs for production conversational assessments.

Required Skills & Qualifications

•Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Speech & Language Processing,

Applied Linguistics, Language Assessment, or equivalent applied experience.

•Hands‑on experience building speech recognition, spoken language understanding, or

automated scoring systems.

•Strong programming skills in Python, with experience using PyTorch or similar ML

frameworks for speech and language modeling.

•Solid grounding in machine learning, statistics, and experimental design, especially as applied

to model evaluation.

•Experience with modern neural speech models and large language models, including

fine‑tuning and evaluation for spoken tasks.

•Expertise in model evaluation metrics relevant to speech and assessment (accuracy, reliability,

validity, fairness).

•Familiarity with responsible AI practices, including bias analysis, interpretability, and

governance for user‑impacting systems.

•Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain model behavior and assessment

outcomes to technical and non‑technical stakeholders.

•Experience working in cross‑functional product teams, contributing to roadmap decisions,

and shipping ML systems into production.

Nice‑to‑Have / Domain Alignment

•Experience with spoken feedback systems, pronunciation scoring, fluency analysis, or

conversational AI.

•Background in skills assessment, talent evaluation, or hiring platforms using AI‑based

decision support.

•Familiarity with human‑in‑the‑loop evaluation, rater alignment, or psychometric concepts for

AI scoring systems.Impact of the Role

This role directly enables:

•Learner‑facing speaking practice with immediate, actionable feedback powered by speech

LMs.

•Hiring‑grade oral communication and skills assessments that support fair, data‑driven talent

decisions.

•Scalable, responsible speech AI systems that balance technical excellence with assessment

validity.

Who we are:

At Pearson, our purpose is simple: to help people realize the life they imagine through learning. We believe that every learning opportunity is a chance for a personal breakthrough. We are the world's lifelong learning company. For us, learning isn't just what we do. It's who we are. To learn more: We are Pearson.

Pearson is an Equal Opportunity Employer and a member of E-Verify. Employment decisions are based on qualifications, merit and business need. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status or any other group protected by law. We actively seek qualified candidates who are protected veterans and individuals with disabilities as defined under VEVRAA and Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act.

If you are an individual with a disability and are unable or limited in your ability to use or access our career site as a result of your disability, you may request reasonable accommodations by emailing TalentExperienceGlobalTeam@grp.pearson.com.

Job: Data Engineering

Job Family: TECHNOLOGY

Organization: English Language Learning

Schedule: FULL_TIME

Workplace Type: Remote

Req ID: 23534

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