Lead Program Manager- Generative AI Data Operations

As a trusted global transformation partner, Welocalize accelerates the global business journey by enabling brands and companies to reach, engage, and grow international audiences. Welocalize delivers multilingual content transformation services in translation, localization, and adaptation for over 250 languages with a growing network of over 400,000 in-country linguistic resources. Driving innovation in language services, Welocalize delivers high-quality training data transformation solutions for NLP-enabled machine learning by blending technology and human intelligence to collect, annotate, and evaluate all content types. Our team works across locations in North America, Europe, and Asia serving our global clients in the markets that matter to them. www.welocalize.com
To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
Job Reference: #LI-JC1
ROLE OVERVIEW
Leads a program of AI training data projects at scale. Owns program-level strategy and delivery, manages a cross-functional team, and is the primary owner of the client relationship for the program. Partners closely with the Lead Quality Manager to keep quality consistent and drive continuous improvement across high-volume operations.
Key Responsibilities-
Program strategy & planning: Define program goals, roadmap, milestones, and operating model across multiple projects and vendors.
Team management: Lead a delivery team (PMs, Coordinators) with clear goals, capacity plans, coaching, and performance feedback.
Client ownership: Act as the day-to-day executive contact; run governance, planning, and QBR-style reviews; align scope, priorities, and change.
Quality partnership: Co-own quality outcomes with the Manager of Quality; align on guidelines, audits, acceptance criteria, and corrective actions.
Scale & throughput: Plan and secure rater/annotator capacity; optimize shifts, handoffs, automation, and tooling to meet high-volume targets.
Financial stewardship: Build and manage budgets, margins, and change orders; ensure commercial and delivery commitments stay aligned.
Risk, issue & change control: Maintain program RAID; lead root-cause analyses and remediation; escalate high-impact items with options and impact.
Process improvement & automation: Standardize SOPs, templates, and dashboards; pilot and scale automation with Ops Tech.
Compliance & security: Ensure policy adherence for data handling, privacy, and platform access across the program.
Stakeholder management: Coordinate with Sales/Account, Quality, Operations, and Vendor Management to meet client and business goals.
Requirements
Education- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in business, operations, data/engineering, or a related field.
Experience-
4- 5 years leading large or multi-workstream delivery in AI data, content review, labeling/annotation, or adjacent domains.
Proven program-level experience in high-volume environments, including vendor management and capacity planning.
Record of managing client relationships and running governance cadences.
Skills-
Program planning and portfolio governance across multiple projects.
Team leadership: goal setting, coaching, delegation, and performance feedback.
Strong communication with senior client stakeholders and internal leaders.
Solid use of spreadsheets, PM/task boards, and BI dashboards; familiarity with SQL/ETL concepts is a plus.
Quality mindset with practical use of SOPs, QA gates, and acceptance criteria.
Sound judgment on scope, time, cost, and quality; confident negotiation and escalation.
Comfortable working with global, distributed teams (advanced English).
Scope & Autonomy-
Manages a single program/team end-to-end, setting operating rhythms and standards within agreed policies and budgets.
Makes day-to-day and tactical strategic decisions for the program; escalates only non-standard or high-impact items.
Direct line management for PMs/Coordinators and dotted-line influence over cross-functional partners.
Owns the client relationship for the program and partners with the Lead Quality Manager on outcomes.