Also called: Pronunciation Editor, Pronunciation Linguist
Figures out how to say names, places and new words correctly for dictionaries, newsrooms, audiobooks and voice assistants.
A new world leader is elected and the newsroom needs to know how to say her name by tonight, so you call her embassy and write a respelling. Another day you add 500 drug names and town names to a voice assistant's pronunciation list, using phonetic symbols, then listen to the robot voice and fix the ones it still mangles.
Approximate: anchored on Bureau of Labor Statistics data for a broader job group.
Bachelor's degree (4-year), about 4 years after high school. Bachelor's in linguistics; phonetics training is key.
Ways in: 4-year college, Graduate school. Training cost: $15k – $60k.
Majors to look at: Linguistics, Speech & Hearing Science, Computational Linguistics.
Growing about average. Small niche at dictionaries, broadcasters and voice-tech companies.
Medium risk for 10 years. Text-to-speech systems guess most words well; rare names, new words and quality checks still need trained ears.
Classes: A world language, English, Choir or theater (ear training).
Official data: O*NET occupation 19-3099.
Career Universe is an early version. Pay, training and AI-risk figures are estimates to start your own research, not verified facts. The research was written with AI research assistants, checked by validation scripts and spot-checked by hand. Check anything important with schools, employers and official sources. How the numbers work.