Computational Linguist

Classification: Contract

Contract Length: 12-months

Position Summary

The Computational Linguist – Contact Center Virtual Agent and IVR is a key technical resource on projects which designs and manage Natural Language Processing (NLP) systems for conversational user experiences. This person works with product owners, developers, designers, and data scientists/analysts to conceptualize projects, recommend approaches, analyze data, and implement NLP solutions. In this role, you will partner with Product, Engineering, and Business stakeholders to design industry-leading, empathetic, and delightful customer experiences that engage customers and at the same time resolve their issues promptly. The individual filling this position should have a background and general understanding of contact center technologies as it pertains to the healthcare industry. Prior knowledge of Noble, Avaya or Contact Center as a Service, Cloud technologies (Google CCAI preferred), and Software Development Life Cycle experience is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Design intent architecture and define intents, entities, training data, test data, and synonyms
• Analyze or generate voice and chat-based training data to train and optimize language models and grammars for Natural Language Understanding (NLU); develop Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to automate tasks such as using an NLU model to predict a caller’s intent
• Train and troubleshoot production NLU model performance for current state optimization and to enable and scale future use cases
• Refine language models to target Key Performance Indicator (KPI) optimization, such as increasing VA/IVR containment or reducing transfer rate
• Work with Conversation Designers and Developers to optimize platform settings for NLU performance; defines and tunes platform thresholds and global handling behaviors
• Adjust and tune speech recognition models and text-to-speech pronunciations to adapt to healthcare specific terminology
• Stays abreast of changes in Large Language Model (LLM) and Generative AI platforms and technologies
• Elicits, analyzes, specifies, and validates the business needs of stakeholders as they related to virtual agent and IVR technologies.
• Works with stakeholders and project team to prioritize collected requirements.
• Researches, reviews, and analyzes the effectiveness and efficiency of existing requirements-gathering processes and develop strategies for enhancing or further leveraging these processes.
• Participates in the QA of products/solutions to ensure features and functions have been enabled and optimized.
• Analyzes and verifies requirements for completeness, consistency, comprehensibility, feasibility, and conformity to standards.
• Develops and utilizes standard templates to accurately and concisely write requirements specifications.
• Creates process models, specifications, diagrams, and charts to provide direction to developers and/or the project team.
• Develops and conduct peer reviews of the business requirements to ensure that requirement specifications are correctly interpreted.
• Partner with all stakeholders to identify and document strategy and opportunities of call flows (including virtual agent and IVR solutions) that ensure continuous improvement and optimize flows to meet business goals and objectives.
• Accountable for demonstrating success of utilizing virtual agent and IVR technologies through improved containment, resolution rates, patient satisfaction and lower total cost per account worked.
• Applies technical knowledge and understanding of business processes to recommend opportunities for optimizing business process through utilization of technology.
• Works with IT and Operations to help expand and implement virtual agent technologies to other business units within the Contact Centers.
• Knowledgeable of available data and application details to analyze and guide data design needs for business decisions, resolution of issues and validation of solutions.
• Creates an environment that encourages information sharing, team-based resolution, cross-training, and process improvement. Providing guidance and/or instruction to junior staff members.
  
  

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in computational linguistics, linguistics, computer science, data science, math, statistics or related field.
• 5 years of conversational experience, including 5 years in Content Design and Conversation Design with proven track record of successful deployments with projects in both voice and digital virtual agents.
• 2 years of Experience in Google DialogFlow CX or other major AI platforms (Amazon Lex or Microsoft Luis) is required.
• 2 years of experience with Contact Centers, IVR/VUI, and/or conversational AI projects.
• Experience with a dialer system preferred.
• Experience with data visualization tools like Tableau, Power BI, etc. preferred.
• Experience in related industries a plus (e.g., healthcare, collections, financial, data analytics and processing).
• Experience working in Agile work environments.
• Experience with flowcharting software, like Lucid, Visio and Voiceflow for prototyping.
• Healthcare Revenue Management experience is preferred.
• Understanding of software development lifecycle and agile development methodologies.
• SQL fluency; familiarity with relational database concepts; familiarity with tools used in open-source software development; text manipulation skills using Python or Ruby; understanding of controlled vocabularies.
• Deep understanding of machine learning and natural language technology.
• Strong knowledge of concepts in computational linguistics, morphology, syntax and semantics, and natural language processing.
• Excellent communication (oral and written) skills, particularly in writing practical and data-driven proposals.
• Strong attention to detail including proven ability to prioritize competing initiatives simultaneously.
• Robust analytical, Big Query, and Microsoft Excel skills.
• Ability to think tactically, persuade stakeholders, and execute methodically.
• Understanding of call center environments required.
• Knowledge of relational database structure and ability to monitor processing to identify issues preferred.
• Knowledge of hardware and operating systems and ability to work in a distributed environment.
• Solid Virtual Agent knowledge; CCAI Dialogflow, CCaaS Voicebot, AWS Virtual Assistant preferred.
• Excellent communication skills, able to present, negotiate and influence at C-level.