NLP Engineers make the computer think and act like a human

Sreetha has completed her M.Tech in Computational Linguistics. Currently she is working as an NLP Engineer (Natural Language Processing).

Career-Journey-Natural-Language-Programming-Engineer-Sreetha — Sreetha’s Career Journey as Natural Language Programming Engineer

What do you do as an NLP Engineer?

My role is to build language models from huge amount of data and use those datas to predict things. For example Sentiment analysis, Topic identification from text, Domain classification etc.

Sentiment Analysis is the process of determining whether a piece of writing is positive, negative or neutral. Read more about sentiment analysis from monkeylearn.

What is Machine Learning all about?

Machine learning is not just about programming. To understand algorithms you need to have interest in mathematics and strong knowledge in the concepts of:

Vector algebra
Matrix and Determinants
Statistics (probability)

If you are interested in knowing how computer learn patterns and predicts the output or how Youtube suggests videos you may like, go ahead and learn Machine Learning. Its interesting.

What do you love about your job?

I love the challenges involved in this job. Making a computer capable of understanding the Natural Language is the difficult task. Thus NLP and ML (Machine Learning) field is so interesting and has a lots of areas to explore.

The satisfaction I get when the computer talks to me (chatbot), or when the computer understands the emotion of the text I have given as input is very rewarding. I get excited when I teach the computer to translate from English(or any other language) to my mother tongue and much more…

What are the challenges faced by a NLP Engineer?

Human language is rich and there are various ways to express a certain meaning. Making the machine to think and act like a human is the biggest challenge. Developing algorithms which will be at least 90 percent accuracy is too difficult. Another challenging task is translating from one language to another and processing data in that language.

What are the skills and education required to be a NLP Engineer?

Whom ever wish to become a NLP engineer should:

be exposed to subjects like Computational Linguistics
have basic understanding of English Grammar
be good in data structures
have strong mathematical background (Statistics)
have good programming skills (Python, Java, R, Perl)
understand base algorithms on machine learning

M.S. or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning or NLP is required.

What did you want to be when you were in college?

I wanted to be a Teacher, that is the reason why I went for MTech. But after M.Tech I loved the area of Natural Language Processing. Therefore I chose a career which will enhance my knowledge in that area.

How do you like to spend your free time?

I love hearing music, apart from that I like to learn new technologies in my field. So mostly during the free time, I will be learning new things.

The whole world is about learning, learn something new. Keep learning.

Does the career fit you as you thought it would?

Yes, of course. I was able to explore more in the field of NLP, which I always wanted. And day by day am getting interesting and challenging tasks.

Anyone who loves language and likes to play with language can help computers to understand language.

What steps did you take to land in your present job?

During my M.Tech, I had opportunity to do research and publish papers in the field of NLP and Machine Learning. It helped to enhance my knowledge. I also did my Internship in Ernst & Young.

What do you think everyone leaving higher secondary school should know?

The most important thing to have is, good programming skills and strong mathematical background.

What are your future aspirations?

I would like to pursue Ph.D in the same field to know more about the statistics involved.