[Hiring] Principal, Crowd Operations & Research Partnerships @Welocalize

Role Description

Serves as the independent quality and research-partnership lead for a major enterprise account's crowd-based AI training data operations. Leads a small, dedicated team of onsite Site Program Leads (SPLs), structured outside the delivery organization it oversees so that quality oversight of crowd work is never performed by the same team accountable for producing it. Builds direct relationships with the client's Research organization to help plan projects and stand up new crowd work, and partners with the account's existing Program Directors on SPL talent without managing their teams. As an Advanced Professional (AP3), this is a senior expert, individual-contributor-plus role: the value is expertise, independence, and trust built through deep discipline knowledge, not org-building. It sits at the top of the Advanced Professional band, where leading a discipline begins, just below the formal Leader step.

Key Responsibilities

• SPL leadership: Lead the onsite SPL team directly as its senior expert and point of accountability; Acts as primary internal stakeholder to Program Director organization.
• Independence & quality oversight: Maintain organizational separation from existing program delivery leadership so quality oversight of crowd work is never performed by the same team accountable for producing it.
• Research partnership: Build direct, ongoing relationships with Research stakeholders, acting as a trusted planning partner rather than a downstream execution resource.
• Project planning support: Help researchers scope and plan upcoming projects, translating research goals into concrete crowd data collection or annotation requirements.
• Project stand-up: Gather crowd input needs directly from Research and use them to stand up new crowd projects, owning the path from research conversation to live project.
• Talent partnership: Partner with the account's existing Program Directors to identify, assess, and develop candidates for SPL roles; a collaborative pipeline relationship, not a management one.
• Capacity & utilization: Own capacity and utilization planning for the SPL function, including workload distribution, portfolio coverage, and staffing needs across the crowd program.
• Client engagement: Serve as a visible, client-facing expert on SPL and research-partnership matters, including direct introductions to senior client stakeholders.
• Escalation & role clarity: Build and maintain clear escalation protocols and role boundaries between SPLs and program-level delivery leads to prevent confusion on either side.
• Governance representation: Represent the SPL function in account planning and governance discussions, ensuring independence is understood and respected by both internal teams and the client.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience in business, operations, data/engineering, or a related field.
• 10+ years of experience in operations or quality leadership within a crowd/gig-based or BPO delivery environment, with demonstrated depth as a subject-matter expert rather than pure people-management experience.
• Demonstrated experience operating (or building) a function that is structurally independent from the team it evaluates or oversees; quality assurance, audit, or compliance-adjacent leadership experience is a strong plus.
• Experience partnering directly with technical or research stakeholders on project planning, not just executing pre-scoped work.

Requirements

• Comfortable partnering cross-functionally with peer directors on talent identification without direct management authority over their teams.
• Strong capacity planning and workforce analytics skills.
• Direct, client-facing communication style; comfortable being introduced to and building trust with senior client stakeholders, including researchers, on the strength of expertise rather than title.
• Track record of standing up new projects from early-stage planning conversations, not just executing defined scopes.
• Track record of building clear role definitions and escalation protocols in ambiguous or overlapping organizational structures.
• Comfortable working with global, distributed teams (advanced English).
• Comfortable in a senior individual-contributor capacity: leads a small team but is not building or scaling a broader management organization.