Research Assistant

Nuance Labs is building photorealistic, real-time AI avatars with emotional intelligence: a full-duplex audiovisual system that can listen, speak, react, interrupt, and respond like a real person.

We're a research company, with PhDs from MIT, UW, Oxford, CMU, and Johns Hopkins, and industry experience from Apple, Meta, Amazon AGI, and more. The team is small, the work is real, and the problems are unsolved.

Most conversational AI avatars today are hacks — a face slapped on a speech-to-speech pipeline, stuck in the uncanny valley: emotionless, mechanical, one-turn-at-a-time. Current systems take 2–5 seconds to respond; natural conversation requires sub-500ms. That's a 10x improvement, and it demands rethinking the entire stack.

That rethinking starts with full-duplex: an AI that listens and speaks simultaneously, perceives emotion in real time, and responds with a face that actually reflects it. It's an extremely hard problem, and we're developing foundation models designed for it from the ground up.

We're looking for a part-time Research Assistant to support our research team with day-to-day study operations. We're looking for someone who is detail-oriented and has strong interpersonal skills. The role starts with 1-2 weeks of required on-site training, then transitions to fully remote.

• →Moderate sessions for data collection studies
• →Moderate sessions for UX research studies
• →Perform annotation and QA on collected data
• →Handle scheduling and coordination for study sessions

• Comfortable interacting with a wide range of people; service industry experience is a strong plus
• No technical or STEM background required — this is not a technical role
• College degree is a nice-to-have, not a requirement
• Reliable and comfortable following structured processes
• Able to complete required on-site training (1-2 weeks) before transitioning to remote work

• Remote after initial on-site training
• Currently prioritizing US-based and Seattle candidates
• Hours: 10-20 hours per week, increasing with experience
• Pay: $20-30/hour, varies by locale