4 Natural Language Processing Career Paths

A career in natural language processing (NLP) is a path to a growing field working with AI and machine learning models that allow computers to understand and manipulate human speech. As an NLP specialist, you can work on projects in business, finance, health care, retail, and more industries. Additionally, jobs like NLP engineer, NLP research scientist, and AI product manager have positive growth projections. Professionals in these fields can expect the following growth rates over the next decade: 

• NLP software engineers: 17 percent [1]

• NLP research scientists: 26 percent [2]

• AI product managers: 17 percent [3]

Explore four natural language processing career paths, how to get started in the field, and what entry-level jobs may help you gain experience in the field. 

What is the natural language processing career path?

You may notice that many NLP job descriptions list similar skills, like programming, software development, and linguistics. NLP technology and the fields that support it are evolving as customer-facing products that use NLP are starting to become more common. Many roles in NLP will allow you to design and build NLP models. 

You can also find jobs on NLP projects where your job title may not include natural language processing. For example, you may work on NLP projects as a data scientist, software developer, machine learning engineer, or research engineer. 

NLP career paths differ based on the role you play in the team developing NLP models and the goal of your work. For example, you may work as an NLP software engineer creating a model to help companies understand the emotions behind text data like social media posts, or you may work as an NLP data scientist to help companies make sense of the data the model returns. 

4 natural language processing career paths

Your natural language processing career path will depend on your goals and skills. Four potential career paths include engineering, research science, computational linguistics, and AI product management. Within these fields, you’ll find entry-level jobs, and as you gain experience or advanced education, you will likely find jobs that require more responsibility. 

Natural language processing engineering

As a natural language processing engineer, you will design and build artificial intelligence models to understand and respond to human language. You will select training data and train AI models to understand patterns in language, then test and fine-tune the model as needed. You will build NLP models to solve problems or work to integrate these models into software or other development projects. 

As a natural language processing engineer, you’ll likely work with a team of other professionals, including other engineers, data scientists, and NLP specialists, in industries like retail, finance, business, entertainment, marketing, health care, and more. 

To start a career in NLP engineering, you will likely need to earn a bachelor’s degree, although more advanced positions may prefer that you earn a master’s degree. You may be able to find an entry-level job with an associate degree and related experience or certification in NLP. You can start earning experience as a junior NLP engineer before moving into roles like NLP engineer, NLP software engineer, or machine learning engineer. 

After gaining experience in the field, earning an advanced degree, or developing your skills, you may qualify for a more senior or leadership role in engineering, such as senior NLP engineer, NLP team lead, or head of machine learning. 

Natural language processing research science

As a natural language processing research scientist, you will also design and build NLP models and systems, focusing on developing new models and advancing NLP technology. You will design and execute experiments—such as creating models that scale to your client's needs or serve a specific purpose like improving chatbots, search engines, or how NLP models analyze a document—to study different aspects of the potential uses of natural language processing. You will report your findings to your company or leadership team, and you may also publish your findings for the greater scientific community. 

To start a career in NLP research science, you will need to earn a bachelor’s degree, although many positions will prefer that you have an advanced degree, such as a master’s. You will need an understanding of computer science, math, physics, and electrical engineering principles. 

You can also pursue certifications or other credentials to help demonstrate your skills. 

You can start gaining experience as a research assistant. As you gain experience, you can move into NLP research scientist roles. Later in your career, you may choose to advance to a more senior role or a leadership role like a senior NLP data scientist. 

Computational linguistics

As a computational linguist, you will use your understanding of natural language principles to help develop NLP applications and models. You may work on projects such as machine translations, text analysis, search engine creation or development, and others that allow a computer to understand and manipulate human language. 

You’ll need to complete your education before becoming a computational linguist. Many professionals in this role hold a bachelor’s degree, although a master’s degree is common. If you don’t have a programming background, you might begin gaining experience as you develop your skills in an entry-level position like speech data analyst or linguistic quality manager. 

After earning experience in the field and developing your skills and education, you may qualify for senior or leadership roles, including senior computational linguist. 

AI product manager

As a product manager, you will oversee a product's design, creation, and marketing strategy. As an AI product manager, you can expect to either work on projects that feature AI technology, such as NLP models or to use AI to improve and enhance existing projects. You will likely conduct research to determine your customer’s or client’s needs and then collaborate with other teams to design and build the product. 

To start a career as a product manager, you will need a business or product management background. It’s common for professionals in this field to hold a bachelor’s degree. However, the career role of an AI product manager is relatively new, and you may also transition to this role from a software background. You may gain relevant experience in careers like software development or software product management before rounding out your skills to become an AI product manager. 

Once you gain experience or add to your skills and education, you may qualify for leadership roles, such as senior product manager or director of product. 

How much can you make? Natural language processing salary 

The average salary as a natural language processing professional will depend on your job title, experience level, and other factors like education, industry, and location. Explore the average salary for jobs in natural language processing: 

*All salary data comes from Glassdoor as of January 2025 and does not include additional pay such as bonuses, commission, or profit-sharing.

Natural language processing engineering

• Junior NLP engineer: $97,208

• NLP engineer: $123,306

• NLP software engineer: $113,329

• Machine learning engineer: $122,439

• Senior NLP engineer: $143,204

• NLP team lead: $121,174

• Head of machine learning: $164,267

Natural language processing research

• NLP research assistant: $48,887

• NLP research scientist: $135,057 

• Senior data scientist: $158,478

Computational linguistics

• Speech data analyst: $96,729

• Linguistic quality manager: $97,082

• Computational linguist: $97,042

• Senior computational linguist: $128,368

AI product management

• Software developer: $104,172

• Product manager: $124,607 

• AI product manager: $156,454

• Senior AI product manager: $166,596

Explore your natural language processing career path on Coursera

A career in natural language processing will allow you to work with and further NLP technology and models. If you want to get started in an entry-level NLP role, you can learn the skills you need to be successful on Coursera. For example, consider enrolling in the Natural Language Processing Specialization offered by Deep Learning.AI to learn more about how NLP works and how to use it. You can also explore role-specific programs, such as the IBM Data Science Professional Certificate or the IBM AI Developer Professional Certificate, to help you train for an entry-level role.