Kiswahili Machine Learning Fellow

Scope: This role will provide an opportunity to build out the next phase of the Common Voice project which includes: - Developing partnerships and improving the platform to help us scale both languages contributing to Common Voice and - Developing new communities for new languages (with an immediate focus on Kiswahili). Play a key role in developing and planning our long term aspirations in the data donation space Read more about Mozilla's Common Voice and underserved languages here: [login to view URL] [login to view URL] All of this work will have a tie-in to Mozilla’s emerging Data Futures Lab initiative: [login to view URL] Deliverable: As our Kiswahili Machine Learning Fellow you will work closely with Mozilla’s Fellow Local Lead (Under-resourced Languages), and the Mozilla Foundation Common Voice project team, focussing on building: - An open voice dataset in Kiswahili suitable for training a speech-to-text engine for seven specific use-cases (1,000+ hours), including domain-specific subset needed for specific use cases - A trained speech-to-text model in Kiswahili based on Mozilla’s DeepSpeech open source technology, with technical assistance provided for implementation into use cases like a local product or initiative - Distributing the STT model in various ways as needed by the community; as a package, as an API or through other methods - Establishing and supporting a Kiswahili language community - Establishing and supporting the Kiswahili tech community, with a goal of encouraging adoption and implementation of voice technology. This requires some technical expertise: writing code, advancing standards and methods for data collection, and also working with external project collaborators to support their efforts in collecting data and using speech recognition models. You will furthermore support the Community Lead in growing an ecosystem around voice technology specifically, and AI more generally. Preferred qualifications: - Ideally, you will have academic and some professional experience in Machine Learning (specifically TensorFlow and Python) and voice technology - You bring creative and original ideas for building technologies and SDG-relevant product use cases - You have a passion for under-resourced languages, with exposure to languages and linguistics - You have some experience in bringing value to open source projects and mentoring/supporting contributors. - You can work in a self-directed manner to achieve agreed goals and outcomes. - Given this work crosses teams and involves outside collaborators, you will bring strong interpersonal skills, ability to communicate, and relationship building skills. - You are able to work on diverse and geographically distributed teams, and in particular across cultures. - As a plus you have some experience in international development. - As a plus you have previous exposure to STT toolkits such as DeepSpeech, Kaldi or CMU Sphinx Timeline: Part-time, ongoing. Mozilla Foundation Hiring Practices: We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.