About Turing and the Role

Turing, based in San Francisco, California, is a leading research accelerator for frontier AI labs and a trusted partner for global enterprises deploying advanced AI systems. We are seeking a QA Specialist, Audio Annotation & Diarization (Arabic), to join our team on a contract basis in Saudi Arabia. This role is suitable for individuals with 0-1 years of experience, focusing on ensuring the highest quality of audio data and annotations for advanced AI systems.

Role Purpose and Workflow

This project aims to build a highly accurate, evaluation-grade dataset of transcribed, multi-channel audio recordings to assess multilingual, multi-speaker AI systems. The role involves evaluating high-quality, realistic conversations representing diverse dynamics, contexts, and demographics. As a QA Specialist, you will serve as the final quality control point, responsible for reviewing the end-to-end quality of both audio recordings and human-verified annotations after initial transcription and diarization passes.

Key Responsibilities

• Evaluate multi-channel audio recordings to ensure adherence to strict technical and fidelity requirements, including channel isolation and quiet recording environments free from disruptive background noise, clipping, or low gain.
• Review human-validated transcriptions for exceptionally high accuracy and compliance with strict low error-rate (WER) targets.
• Confirm that transcripts accurately capture spontaneous, unnormalized speech, preserving natural conversational dynamics such as overlaps, interruptions, and false starts.
• Validate the precision of turn-level and word-level timestamps, as well as speaker identification, particularly in complex, overlapping dialogue.
• Comfortably read and validate underlying JSON-formatted data to ensure accurate metadata tagging and timestamp logic.
• Verify the accuracy of all applied metadata, including demographic markers, contextual domains, and specific conversational tags.
• Enforce strict safety and privacy standards by auditing sessions for the absence of Personally Identifying Information (PII), toxic, or sensitive content.
• Assess the end-to-end quality of the annotation task, assigning clear pass/fail or agree/disagree statuses during review.
• Provide detailed, actionable comments and feedback when disagreeing with an annotator's work.

Qualifications and Requirements

• Exceptional ear for audio fidelity and the ability to detect subtle background noises, channel bleed, or clipping.
• Meticulous attention to detail for verifying word-level timestamps and strict, unnormalized verbatim transcription rules.
• Native proficiency in Arabic.
• Ability to accurately assess complex multi-speaker dynamics.

Ideal Candidate Backgrounds

Candidates with the following backgrounds are particularly well-suited for this role:

• Linguists/Phonetics Experts: Possessing a deep understanding of natural, unnormalized speech patterns and expertise in accurately identifying and annotating complex conversational dynamics, including overlaps, false starts, and backchannels.
• Language Teachers: Demonstrating exceptional, native-level mastery of Arabic and the ability to strictly adhere to verbatim transcription guidelines, documenting every stutter, filler word, and disfluency without applying prescriptive grammar corrections.
• Professional Transcriptionists: Exhibiting an ear for audio fidelity, rigorous timestamping skills, and experience meeting strict accuracy targets, with a precise approach to turn-level and word-level timestamping.

Contract Details and Work Environment

This is a fully remote, contractor assignment/freelancer role with an initial duration of 4 weeks. Please note that this engagement does not include medical benefits or paid leave. There is potential for contract extension based on performance and project needs. Shortlisted candidates will undergo an internal review process and will be contacted for onboarding.