ERIC THOMAS

[email protected]

PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY

Highly skilled and detail-oriented Data Annotation Specialist with over 5 years of hands-on experience in audio, video, image, and text data labeling for AI, NLP, and computer vision model training. Proven track record in improving dataset quality for speech recognition, object detection, and natural language understanding tasks. Adept at executing large-scale annotation projects with precision, consistency, and compliance to client guidelines. Experienced in QA validation, dataset curation, and model feedback loop improvement. Passionate about producing clean, well-structured datasets that enhance AI performance across healthcare, legal, e-commerce, and multimedia domains.

WORK EXPERIENCE

Senior Language Data Annotation Expert
10/2021 - 01/2025
Deepgram
• Led annotation projects involving speech-to-text transcription, audio segmentation, emotion tagging, and filler-word classification for ASR model development
• Labeled multi-speaker audio in noisy environments, marking speech overlaps, background events, and speaker intent
• Conducted video annotation identifying visual cues, gestures, scene boundaries, and action recognition for multimodal datasets
• Collaborated with data engineers and linguists to refine model training sets by providing error analyses and annotation QA feedback
• Used tools like Labelbox, Deepgram, Prodigy, and VIA to conduct precise annotation for both structured and unstructured datasets
Lead Annotator & Data QA Specialist
02/2020 - 12/2023
Lionbridge
• Supervised annotation teams in image labeling (bounding boxes, polygon segmentation, object tracking) and text labeling (NER, sentiment analysis, entity linking)
• Annotated and reviewed conversational AI datasets for chatbot training, intent recognition, and dialogue flow improvement
• Led quality assurance audits to detect annotation inconsistencies, providing performance feedback to annotators and model engineers
• Coordinated multi-language data projects ensuring cultural, linguistic, and contextual accuracy across Swahili and English datasets
• Collaborated with the ML engineering team to optimize dataset balance, label accuracy, and metadata structuring
Swahili & English Localization & Annotation Specialist
12/2023 - 04/2025
American Language Services
• Performed detailed audio and text annotation for NLP and translation AI systems, including tagging entities, sentiments, and contextual markers
• Translated and localized educational and medical datasets while ensuring alignment between source and target annotations
• Handled semantic tagging and metadata enrichment for large Swahili corpora used in machine translation model training
• Participated in annotation calibration sessions to maintain high inter-annotator agreement (IAA)
Freelance Data Annotator, Transcriptionist & QA Reviewer
04/2018 - 03/2025
• Worked with global annotation platforms including Scale AI, TELUS, Remotasks, Surge AI, and Appen, handling diverse projects involving audio transcription, image tagging, and video scene classification
• Provided text labeling for sentiment and topic classification models in domains such as healthcare, finance, and customer service
• Conducted QA reviews of annotated datasets, verifying bounding box accuracy, label consistency, and timestamp synchronization
• Enhanced ASR datasets by performing acoustic event detection, diarization, and utterance alignment
• Delivered consistent 99%+ quality scores and contributed feedback loops that improved annotation guidelines
Localization & Accessibility Specialist
01/2020 - 10/2022
ZOO Digital
• Annotated on-screen elements, dialogues, sound cues, and accessibility markers for media localization and SDH subtitling
• Collaborated with video engineers to synchronize annotated subtitles with speech and action timing
• Ensured compliance with accessibility standards (FCC, WCAG, and Ofcom)

EDUCATION

BSc
09/2013 - 06/2016
Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT)

SKILLS

CERTIFICATIONS

Object Tracking & Localization
Udacity
Data Annotation & AI Quality Assurance
Coursera
Localization
AVT Masterclass
General Transcription Certification Course
TCI
Legal Transcription: Theory & Practice
TranscribeAnywhere
Online Medical Transcriptionist
Penn Foster
Online Training in Subtitling and Media Localization