Hire NLP Developers from Expert Development Teams

The importance of natural language processing (NLP) continues to grow, therefore, companies often find it hard to hire NLP developers. We at DevTeam.Space can help you with hiring them though. 

Top companies and even small-and-medium businesses use NLP for a variety of reasons. A few examples are translation, automatic correction of text, automatic completion of sentences, building customer service chatbots, spam detection, sentiment analysis, etc.  

Naturally, the market for NLP continues to grow rapidly. This market will likely grow from $15.7 billion in 2022 to $49.4 billion by 2027. That translates to an impressive 25.7% CAGR. 

Top NLP developers earn handsomely. NLP talent is in great demand. Businesses sometimes think of hiring freelancers, however, this exposes their projects to considerable risks. We strongly recommend you hire skilled developers from DevTeam.Space for your NLP project. 

You need to first understand the required skills before deciding on a hiring approach. NLP developers need the following expertise:  

Primary skills required by NLP developers

NLP developers need to know the following well:

1. Natural language processing and other relevant AI capabilities  

This category of skills includes the following:

• Sound knowledge of NLP;
• Understanding of text representation techniques;
• Deep understanding of the important NLP algorithms like named entity recognition;
• Sufficient knowledge of other important AI capabilities like machine learning (ML);
• Familiarity with the important machine learning algorithms;
• Knowledge of building, testing, training, and deploying ML models;
• Familiarity with cloud-based NLP development platforms and services, e.g.: Google Cloud Natural Language, Amazon Comprehend, etc. 

Note: Your project might require NLP developers with specific skills. For example, you might need NLP developers with knowledge of large language models (LLMs) like GPT. Alternatively, you might need NLP developers with data science experience. Specify such additional requirements.

2. The relevant programming languages and technology stacks

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We recommend you look for Python skills when hiring NLP developers. This open-source, object-oriented language provides excellent libraries to facilitate AI/ML/NLP development. 

Developers can significantly gain productivity by using these libraries. NLTK (Natural Language Toolkit) are Scikit-learn are examples of such Python libraries. 

You can also use other programming languages like Java. Look for developers skilled in language-specific libraries and frameworks.  

Look for the other skills, e.g.:

• Knowledge of NLP development tools and services like Google Cloud NLP API, Amazon Comprehend, etc.;
• SQL databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.;
• NoSQL databases like MongoDB, Apache Cassandra, etc.;
• Big data frameworks like Hadoop;
• Version-control tools like Git.

3. Mathematics  

NLP engineers need a sound knowledge of mathematics. They must know algebra well, furthermore, they need to understand statistical analysis. Good NLP developers should understand how mathematical algorithms work.

4. Preparing data for training and testing NLP systems

Your chances of meeting business goals using an NLP system greatly depend on the quality of data to train the system. The data sets you collect will often have anomalies, wrong information, etc. NLP developers need to prepare data sets for effective use. They should know the following:

• Identifying relevant sources of data, e.g., existing systems and knowledge bases, etc.;
• Listing the relevant attributes in data;
• Parsing data from different formats like JSON and XML;
• Combining data logically for storing;
• Storing data securely;
• Analyzing data and identifying trends;
• Finding out outliers in the data sets;
• Identifying various exceptions in data;
• Listing missing and wrong data elements;
• Assessing inconsistencies in the data sets;
• Identifying biases in data;
• Arranging the data sets in standard formats;
• Strategizing on how to correct data errors;
• Taking care of the incorrect and missing data elements;
• Finding solutions for extreme values and outliers in data;
• Modify data sets to rectify issues identified;
• Reviewing data sets to ensure that the errors are eliminated;
• Splitting data sets into training and testing data sets. 

Other skills that NLP developers need  

The following are the highly recommended other skills that NLP developers need:

1. An understanding of software development processes and software engineering

NLP developers should have sufficient knowledge in the following areas:

• Testing and DevOps tools;
• The ability to solve complex software development problems by using software architectural concepts;
• Coding best practices;
• Code review and strategies for reviewing code;
• Software development methodologies like agile.

2. The knowledge of developing secure NLP systems

A company undertaking an NLP project needs to collect vast data sets to train the NLP system. The project manager in charge of the NLP development project faces 2 risks. These are as follows:

• Cyber-attackers might tamper with the data sets: The NLP system will make wrong inferences from tampered data sets.
• Data breaches might happen: The reputation of the business suffers, and the company faces regulatory issues.

Companies need to implement several measures at an organizational level to mitigate these risks. A few examples are access control, authentication, cloud security, etc. 

Also, NLP developers should develop systems without security vulnerabilities like injection. Developing secure apps denies hackers the loopholes to launch cyber-attacks. Therefore, NLP developers need application security skills.     

1. Familiarity with your industry  

Customer service chatbots differ widely from chatbots answering academic questions from students. We cite this example only to show that the functionalities of NLP systems vary considerably across industries. You should hire NLP developers with a thorough grasp of your industry. 

2. Competencies that help developers and teams succeed

NLP developers need to work closely with various stakeholders, e.g., business users, user interface (UI) designers, data scientists, etc. They need the following soft skills:

• Communication skills;
• Problem-solving skills;
• The attitude to strive for client satisfaction;
• The ability to work effectively in a team environment;
• Empathy;
• The commitment to deliver tangible values to clients.

How to find the best natural language processing developer?  

You can begin the hiring process by taking the following steps:

1. Choose where to hire NLP developers from

Companies sometimes think of hiring freelancers. They can save software development manpower costs by negotiating a low hourly rate. However, they face multiple risks due to this, e.g.:

• Skills evaluation: Businesses might not be able to evaluate the skills of freelancers. Freelance platforms don’t follow extensive vetting processes to assure their clients. 
• Work management: Freelancers don’t work full-time on projects, therefore, you might not get enough work done by them. Some other freelancers might not communicate adequately. Managing freelance remote developers is harder since you need to contend with time zone differences. Freelance platforms don’t provide any project management support to clients. 
• Turnover: Freelancers might leave in the middle of the project. You will then need to hire replacement developers.
• Data security: Freelancers might not secure your sensitive data.  

You should hire NLP developers from a trustworthy partner like DevTeam.Space. We offer the following advantages:

• Quality of developers: Our developers are skilled, and they have extensive experience. Our stringent vetting process does the job for you! 
• A seamless hiring process: We provide developers with a perfect match for your project requirements. Our no-risk trial period and flexible engagement models help you.
• Flexibility: We provide individual developers as well as software development teams. If your business needs dictate end-to-end project delivery by a software development partner, we can manage and execute the project. You get a trial period too.   
• Software development processes: Our AI-powered agile processes help us deliver predictable outcomes, every time. 
• Project management: Our dedicated account manager helps you manage the project. We assure you that your sensitive data will be handled with due care.

2. Assess the technical expertise of developers by interviewing them effectively 

Do you plan to hire NLP developers from DevTeam.Space? Check whether the developers have worked in your target industry. Assess whether they have worked on projects similar to your NLP development project. 

You don’t need to interview DevTeam.Space developers extensively on technologies. We already have done the hard work for you! Our comprehensive vetting process allows only expert developers to join our community. 

You need to take detailed interviews if you hire freelancers. Check out our interview questions, e.g.:

• Python interview questions;
• Hadoop interview questions.  

Ask in-depth technical questions. At the same time, check how they had solved problems on their past projects.

3. Onboard the new developers 

The new developers should now start working on your project. You need to enable them by onboarding them effectively. Your onboarding process needs to focus on the following aspects:

• Explaining the project: You need to explain the requirements and technical solutions to the new team members. Also, describe the project schedule and project delivery processes.
• Sharing documentation: Share the relevant documentation, e.g., functional requirements, architectural diagram, technical solutions, non-functional requirements, etc.
• Access: Grant the necessary access to the new developers.
• Communication: Set up a communication process. Introduce the new developers to your existing team.

A few NLP interview tips for finding the best developers

The following tips can help you with the hiring process: 

1. Planning to hire remote developers? Assess your project management bandwidth availability before interviewing them.

You might want to hire remote developers, and this decision can pay off handsomely. Many organizations reaped the benefits of hiring remote software developers. After all, they get access to a much larger global talent pool!

However, managing even the best remote developers requires effort. You need to spend sufficient project management effort. Do you have the necessary bandwidth? Assess this. 

Of course, you don’t need to worry about it if you hire remote developers from DevTeam.Space. We provide comprehensive project management support.

2. Assess the depth of skills of candidates and not just the breadth.

Many NLP developers know plenty of development tools, frameworks, etc. They can deliver a simple NLP development project without any noticeable quality issues. Such developers can identify the best tools for a given requirement and deliver the project quickly. 

This breadth of skills might not suffice in a complex NLP development project. Complex projects often have highly customized requirements. Developers need in-depth knowledge of how NLP systems interpret requests of human beings. Evaluate the depth of skills if you have a complex project.

3. Check whether candidates can choose the right algorithm for a business requirement.

There are many NLP and ML algorithms. Their objectives, strengths, and limitations vary widely. You need to use the right algorithm for your project requirements. For example, the Naive Bayes algorithm works well for spam filtering, sentiment analysis, and document classification. Assess whether developers can choose the right algorithm.   

Sample interview questions for finding the perfect NLP developers 

The following are examples of interview questions to gauge the relevant experience of developers:

1. Explain pragmatic ambiguity. 

The same sentence can have different meanings depending on the context. Each of these meanings is valid, and this situation is called “pragmatic ambiguity”. An NLP software system needs to analyze the context and identify the relevant meaning. This can be a complex task. 

Take, for example, the sentence “Do you like to read?”. The person asking this question might just have a curiosity about the other person. Alternatively, the person might want to offer a book to the recipient of the question. 

2. Which NLP process will you use for removing words like “a”, “an”, “the”, “is”, and “and” from a sentence?   

The “Lemmatization” process removes words like “a”, “an”, and the other stop words mentioned. This process also allows the identification of custom stop words. It’s an important process to use before an NLP or ML algorithm on a corpus. NLP developers often utilize NLTK to execute the lemmatization process.

3. During a syntactic analysis exercise, which NLP process helps you to find the root word?

The “Stemming” process enables us to remove suffixes from a word, which helps us to find the root word. Take the word “programming” for example. By removing “ing”, we get to “program”, i.e., the root word. NLTK, the popular library with a seamless integration of various NLP processes, helps us to run the stemming process.   

Submit a Project With Zero Risk

NLP can solve problems of a complex nature for your business, however, you need to deliver an NLP development project successfully. NLP is one of the relatively new technologies. Niche skills make developing NLP systems harder. You certainly need highly skilled developers who are motivated. 

Why would you settle for anything other than top NLP developers? Why would you forego the advantages of seamless hiring and vetting processes? 

Fill up the DevTeam.Space product specifications form. A dedicated and experienced tech account manager will show you how we can help.