Senior Project Manager

Welo Data works with technology companies to provide datasets that are high-quality, ethically sourced, relevant, diverse, and scalable to supercharge their AI models. As a Welocalize brand, WeloData leverages over 25 years of experience in partnering with the world’s most innovative companies and brings together a curated global community of over 500,000 AI training and domain experts to offer services that span:
ANNOTATION & LABELLING: Transcription, summarization, image and video classification and labeling. ENHANCING LLMs: Prompt engineering, SFT, RLHF, red teaming and adversarial model training, model output ranking. DATA COLLECTION & GENERATION: From institutional languages to remote field audio collection. RELEVANCE & INTENT: Culturally nuanced and aware, ranking, relevance, and evaluation to train models for search, ads, and LLM output.
Want to join our Welo Data team? We bring practical, applied AI expertise to projects. We have both strong academic experience and a deep working knowledge of state-of-the-art AI tools, frameworks, and best practices. Help us elevate our clients' Data at Welo Data.
OVERVIEW
The Senior Vendor Project Manager serves as a main point of contact between Welocalize and the client, streamlining and enhancing communication between client lab staff, onsite Vendor Project Managers (part of your extended team) and the Welocalize internal team (back office and recruiting).
He/she will work with the client and other Senior Vendor Project Managers to optimize resource planning and allocation, with the ultimate goal of ensuring client satisfaction. The Senior Vendor Project Manager will provide direct leadership and guidance to the testing teams and other onsite VPMs, monitoring team performance and addressing areas of improvement.

Main Duties

• Provide direct oversight and guidance of Welocalize Vendor PMs and testers at all labs to ensure that projects are executed successfully. 
• Serve as first point of escalation for Welocalize regarding any issues arising for the client, Vendor PMs or testers. 
• Act as a main line of communication between the client/lab staff and Welocalize management/recruiters. 
• Meet with the client to discuss and clarify briefs, policies and requests, deadlines, resource planning and allocation. 
• Report to Welocalize management about onsite activities, team performance, client feedback, requests and policy changes, short- and long-term planning. 
• Report to Welocalize recruiters about immediate and anticipated language needs, upcoming projects, and the status of submitted candidates or testers in training. 
• Receive new candidates from recruiters and make decisions to bring them in for an assessment/interview or present them to the client. 
• Work with the client and other Senior Vendor PMs to coordinate testing efforts and schedule resources for projects in all labs/locations to most effectively meet the client’s needs and goals. 
• Collaborate with VPMs, testers and producers to keep testing schedules on track. 
• Actively seek feedback from the client about the team's performance at all labs, discussing areas of improvement, and devising and enforcing plans of action to obtain improved results. 
• Gather information and feedback from individual VPMs at all labs about the testers' performance, workload management, and any issues encountered while performing their duties. 
• Support and advise the VPMs in addressing issues regarding testers' performance, professional interaction with other testers within the team or from another vendor's team, professional interaction with client lab staff or other employees. 
• Spend at least half a day in each/any other labs designated for a particular client on a weekly basis in order to evaluate performance and highlight training needs of VPMs and testers. 
• Provide training, coaching and guidance to address performance concerns and improve speed and quality of testers’ work. 
• Assist with onboarding procedures for new testers. 
• Compile and maintain standard operating procedures for VPMs. 
• Schedule meetings with VPMs and testers as needed. 
• Promote team-building activities such as after-work gatherings or recognition of special occasions for testers. 
• Keep VPMs up-to-date with changes in Welocalize structure and management to enable VPMs to direct testers to the appropriate contacts for questions related to HR, payroll, compensation, etc. 
• Monitor lab projects in order to project future needs, and communicate this short- and long-term overview to Welocalize managers and recruiters. 
• Schedule meetings with Welocalize management or recruiters as needed. 

Experience

• Natural leader who easily gains respect from and motivates team members 
• Ability to connect easily with colleagues and managers (both Welocalize and client) in a very diverse setting 
• Ability to communicate effectively with client company managers, linguists, onsite and offsite project managers, and testers across all vendors and language groups 
• People management experience 
• Analytical thinking, data analysis skills are a must
• Excellent command of written and spoken English 
• High level of integrity and ability to handle information with discretion, discerning when confidentiality is important 
• Genuine team player who puts team first 
• High level of responsibility, ownership and accountability 
• Conflict management and mediation skills 
• Ability to stay calm under pressure and when facing conflicting demands from various stakeholders 
• Ability to address groups of 10-100 
• Ability to think strategically 
• Extreme attention to detail and great organizational skills for managing multiple tasks and project deadlines 
• Keen sense of judgment when prioritizing tasks and managing delivery of communications 
• Ability to troubleshoot and come up with solutions on the spot in a fast-paced, demanding environment 
• Experience providing trainings to people individually and in groups, in technical and other skills 
• Ability to present complex tasks in a simple and clear manner 
• 3+ years experience in the QA, localization or globalization industry 
• Bilingual preferred
• In-depth knowledge of OS X, iOS, iWork, iCloud, iTunes, Windows, MS Office 

Other Relevant Skills

• Project management experience and/or training.
• Multilingual skills, and bilingual level of English (both written and spoken) is a must.
• Knowledge of basic HTML and Unicode.
• Basic computer networking knowledge (setting up IP addresses, connecting devices using proxy, etc.).
• Experience writing and editing QA plans.
• Familiarity with photo editing and desktop publishing.
• Experience in conflict resolution or mediation.

Education Level

• Bachelor's degree in People and Business Management or a related field, Language, Linguistics, or equivalent work experience.