Sr. NLP Scientist

Do the best work of your life

Would you like to be a part of an innovative venture-backed startup that is pioneering the next frontier in human communication? Cognixion is building a revolutionary sensory communication platform with an audacious goal of being able to communicate with anyone around the world via a direct brain computer interface, augmented reality and other nonverbal inputs. Specifically, translating brainwave patterns into digital controls that can be utilized to give people with severe disabilities greater access to communication, giving professionals access to data that helps them make better choices, and new more natural user interfaces for communicating with others. We’re unlocking human potential by working at the intersection of artificial intelligence (A.I.), augmented reality (AR) and neurotechnology and are developing a platform of accessible solutions that accelerate communication access for those who need it most.

We have a very team-oriented environment and work in a collaborative fashion. We have grown over the past four years and now have offices and employees based in Santa Barbara California and Toronto Ontario.

Your role: Sr. NLP Scientist

Cognixion is developing a revolutionary speech prosthesis to enable speech generation for accessibility users worldwide. Using a novel augmented reality brain computer interface, Cognixion is enabling users with speech disabilities to recover their humanity, independence and connection with others. A key component of Congixion’s solution is the generation of user-specific utterances by exploiting a mixture of history, biosignal data, and external context. To accomplish this mission, Cognixion is seeking an action oriented thought leader to drive our language generation technology agenda. 

The Sr. NLP Scientist will take ownership of and lead the development of novel speech processing algorithms and speech generation technologies. The scientist will work closely with the biosignals and data science team to develop and integrate speech and language technologies that leverage the unique capabilities of the Cognixion ONE platform. 

As the leader in NLP at Cognixion, the Sr. Scientist will be responsible for establishing a long-term research program that enables Cognixion to develop a leadership position in the communication and assistive technologies space. This leadership position should include innovative collaborations with strategic University and industry partners and should generate intellectual property that underpins the products of Cognixion. 

This position is ideally located close to Cognixion’s Toronto Canada or Santa Barbara California offices but fully remote applications will also be considered. 

Responsibilities: 

• Support clinicians in designing and evaluating machine learning techniques for processing user-generated text 

• Developing novel approaches to speech generation leveraging available biosignals including brain sensing technologies. 

• Lead innovation activities in the language domain including project definition, collaboration with internal and external research teams such as Universities and strategic partners 

• Collaborate with other engineers on the team to research, build, and deploy personalized language models aligned to customer needs  

• Create proofs of concept utilizing mobile and cloud-based pipelines to demonstrate and compare efficacy of various NLP approaches 

• Work closely with the UX and product teams to establish a medium to long term innovation and technology path for language technologies at Cognixion. 

• Participate in the creation and evaluation of vocabularies and corpi for model development  

• Support creation and maintenance of detailed documentation for SaMD evaluations 

The ideal candidate has: 

• Masters or PhD degree related to machine learning, natural language processing, or computer science preferred 

• Minimum of 5 years of experience innovating and delivering technologies used in products. 

• Ability to rapidly prototype new language models and integrate them into a user-testable platform 

• Familiarity with state-of-the-art methods for language modelling and transfer learning (e.g., BERTs and other transformer-based approaches) 

• Detailed under-the-hood understandings of typical machine learning frameworks such as Tensorflow, PyTorch, and scikit-learn 

• Familiarity with foundational statistical and neural machine learning techniques 

• Prior experience with personalized word prediction, context completion is an asset 

• Experience in industry with a demonstrated contribution to a commercially available product is an asset  

• Publications in NLP / ML journals and conferences are an asset 

About Cognixion 

Cognixion is an internationally award-winning neuroscience and technology company pioneering the field of Assisted Reality. Cognixion develops AI powered non-invasive BCI (Brain Computer Interface), assistive tech, and delightfully useful applications for people, including those affected by neurodevelopmental disorders and injuries to the brain and spinal cord. Based in Santa Barbara, California, the company develops software that helps people with communication challenges express themselves significantly faster than any other solution on the market and provides a direct non-verbal interface to control Alexa enabled devices around the home, school, and workplace. For more information, please visit https://cognixion.com. 

We’re on a global mission. Join us as we transform the lives of millions of people, and design and develop some of the most advanced technology available. We want this to be your forever home, and the place where you will tell everyone that you’ve done the best work of your life.