Speak is the first & only app that lets you get real conversational practice without needing a live tutor on the other end. And we build some serious AI tech to make that possible. Backed by Accel, Khosla and Y Combinator.
About the role
Speak cares deeply about learners actually learning and improving with Speak. We have a dedicated Proficiency team to own how we measure learning efficacy and speaking proficiency, from unit-level mastery checks to standalone proficiency tests to onboarding placement, all in service of understanding users’ proficiency levels and learning gains in an accurate, transparent and actionable manner.
What they're looking for
- Language Proficiency Domain Expertise: Deep familiarity with frameworks like CEFR (or ACTFL, IELTS/TOEFL band descriptors) and what separates "did you learn what we taught you" from "how good is your speaking overall."
- Fairness Across Learner Populations: Can identify whether an item or rubric unfairly penalizes specific L1 backgrounds or accents (differential item functioning) — essential for a speech-based test serving learners across dozens of native languages
- Translates Qualitative → Technical: Can turn a construct like "pronunciation quality" into something concrete enough for an ML engineer to build a scoring pipeline against, without either oversimplifying or getting lost in academic nuance
- Ownership of Quality Bar: Comfortable being the sign-off authority on content validity — makes the call clearly and follows through on it, rather than deferring to data alone or product pressure to ship
- Comfort with Ambiguity: Comfortable operating in a 0-to-1 environment. Can wear multiple hats, take a fuzzy goal and turn it into a concrete plan, communicate tradeoffs clearly, and keep momentum without waiting for perfect clarity or team setup
More about this role
Learning a language can change a life by opening doors to new cultures, careers, and communities. Two billion people around the world are actively trying to learn a language, but the best way to learn (one-on-one tutoring) is hard to access at scale and hasn’t been meaningfully improved in decades. Speak is building a human-level, AI-powered tutor in your pocket: a conversation-first experience that lets learners actually speak, get instant feedback, and progress through carefully designed lessons. The result is a complete path from beginner to confident speaker across multiple languages.
Speak first launched in South Korea in 2019, where Speak has now become the number one language learning app, and we now serve learners across many markets and 15+ languages. Speak is one of the world’s leading AI companies, with over $150m raised in venture investment from OpenAI, Accel, Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, and more, with a distributed team across San Francisco, Seoul, Tokyo, Taipei, and Ljubljana.
Speak cares deeply about learners actually learning and improving with Speak. We have a dedicated Proficiency team to own how we measure learning efficacy and speaking proficiency, from...
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