QA Specialist – Audio Annotation & Diarization (Japanese) | Contractor | Fully Remote | 15-Week Engagement
Turing is seeking a detail-oriented QA Specialist with native Japanese proficiency to serve as the final quality checkpoint on an evaluation-grade, multilingual audio annotation dataset. This role is ideal for linguists, professional transcriptionists, or language educators who have a sharp ear for audio fidelity and a meticulous eye for transcription accuracy.
About Turing
Based in San Francisco, Turing is the world's leading research accelerator for frontier AI labs and a trusted partner for global enterprises deploying advanced AI systems. Turing delivers high-quality data, advanced training pipelines, and top-tier AI research expertise across coding, reasoning, STEM, multilinguality, multimodality, and agents.
Role Overview
This project involves building a highly accurate dataset of transcribed, multi-channel audio recordings used to evaluate multilingual, multi-speaker AI systems. Contributors record unscripted group conversations, which are then transcribed, diarized, and human-validated. As QA Specialist, you are the final reviewer — ensuring both audio quality and annotation accuracy meet rigorous standards.
Key Responsibilities
- Audio Quality Assurance: Evaluate multi-channel recordings for technical fidelity, verify channel isolation (no audio bleed), and confirm recordings are free from background noise, clipping, or low gain.
- Transcription & Diarization Verification: Review human-validated transcripts to ensure exceptionally high accuracy and low word error rates (WER). Confirm natural speech elements — overlaps, interruptions, and false starts — are preserved verbatim.
- Timestamp & Speaker Validation: Validate turn-level and word-level timestamps and speaker identification, including in complex overlapping dialogue. Review underlying JSON-formatted data to confirm accurate metadata tagging and timestamp logic.
- Metadata & Content Review: Verify demographic markers, contextual domains, and conversational tags. Enforce strict PII, safety, and privacy standards by auditing sessions for sensitive content.
- QA Reporting: Assign clear pass/fail or agree/disagree statuses and provide detailed, actionable feedback when disagreeing with an annotator's work.
Requirements
- Native proficiency in Japanese
- Exceptional ear for audio fidelity — able to detect subtle noise, channel bleed, or clipping
- Meticulous attention to detail for word-level timestamps and verbatim transcription
- Ability to assess complex multi-speaker conversational dynamics
- Comfort reading and validating JSON-formatted annotation data
Ideal Backgrounds
- Linguists / Phonetics Experts: Deep understanding of natural, unnormalized speech and conversational annotation
- Language Teachers: Native-level mastery with strict adherence to verbatim transcription guidelines
- Professional Transcriptionists: Rigorous timestamping skills and experience meeting strict accuracy targets
Engagement Details
- Duration: 15 weeks
- Commitment: Minimum 40 hours/week, at least 4 hours/day with 4-hour overlap with PST
- Type: Contractor / Freelancer (no medical or paid leave benefits)
- Environment: Fully remote
Evaluation Process
Shortlisted candidates will be reviewed internally by the Turing team and contacted directly for onboarding.
