Vendor Management Lead – Localization & Multilingual AI

About Centific

Centific is a frontier AI data foundry that curates diverse, high-quality data, using our purpose-built technology platforms to empower the Magnificent Seven and our enterprise clients with safe, scalable AI deployment. Our team includes more than 150 PhDs and data scientists, along with more than 4,000 AI practitioners and engineers. We harness the power of an integrated solution ecosystem—comprising industry-leading partnerships and 1.8 million vertical domain experts in more than 230 markets—to create contextual, multilingual, pre-trained datasets; fine-tuned, industry-specific LLMs; and RAG pipelines supported by vector databases. Our zero-distance innovation™ solutions for GenAI can reduce GenAI costs by up to 80% and bring solutions to market 50% faster.

Our mission is to bridge the gap between AI creators and industry leaders by bringing best practices in GenAI to unicorn innovators and enterprise customers. We aim to help these organizations unlock significant business value by deploying GenAI at scale, helping to ensure they stay at the forefront of technological advancement and maintain a competitive edge in their respective markets.

About Job

The Vendor Management Lead – Localization & Multilingual AI is responsible for building, scaling, and leading a global ecosystem of vendors, freelance partners, and managed service providers supporting Centific’s localization, multilingual AI, and AI data programs. This includes human language services, AI-enabled localization workflows, multilingual data collection, annotation, LLM training and evaluation, and specialized language AI services.

This role combines strategic vendor sourcing, commercial and contractual leadership, performance governance, and team management. The Vendor Management Lead oversees a team of Vendor Management Specialists and works cross-functionally with Localization Operations, AI/ML teams, Delivery, Legal, Procurement, Finance, Security, and Sales to ensure scalable, compliant, and high-quality multilingual and AI vendor solutions.

The ideal candidate has deep experience across the localization and AI data supply chain, understands multilingual and AI market pricing, and can evaluate vendors for quality, scalability, compliance, and risk—while also developing a high-performing vendor management team.

Key Responsibilities

1. Vendor Strategy, Sourcing & Market Development

• Define and execute vendor strategy for localization, multilingual AI, and AI data services, aligned with business growth and delivery needs.
• Build and expand a global vendor ecosystem including:
  • Freelance linguists and agencies (translation, MTPE, LQA, terminology)
  • Multilingual AI data providers (text, audio, speech, image, and multimodal)
  • AI annotation, labeling, and evaluation vendors
  • LLM-related language specialists (prompting, authoring, evaluation)
  • Onsite/field data collection partners and managed service providers
• Conduct market research, benchmarking, and supplier segmentation to identify strategic partners and emerging capabilities.

2. End-to-End Vendor Lifecycle & Qualification

• Own the full vendor lifecycle across localization and AI services: sourcing, screening, qualification, pilots, onboarding, performance management, and offboarding.
• Lead vendor qualification programs using structured scorecards covering:
  • Linguistic and AI quality benchmarks
  • Operational maturity and scalability
  • Security, compliance, and data governance
  • Financial and commercial viability
• Ensure vendors meet global data protection, labor, and compliance standards.

3. Contract, Rate & Commercial Management

• Lead negotiations for NDAs, MSAs, SOWs, rate cards, and commercial models across localization and AI programs.
• Partner with Legal and Procurement to ensure compliance with corporate, regulatory, and data protection requirements.
• Maintain scalable pricing models supporting variable demand, multilingual coverage, and AI surge capacity.
• Drive cost optimization while balancing quality, speed, and vendor sustainability.

4. Vendor Performance, Governance & Risk Management

• Define and manage KPIs, SLAs, and quality metrics covering both human localization and AI data services.
• Lead vendor business reviews, audits, and remediation plans.
• Act as senior escalation point for delivery, quality, contractual, or performance issues.
• Proactively identify risks related to scalability, compliance, quality, or geopolitical constraints.

5. Team Leadership & People Management

• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of Vendor Management Specialists, setting clear goals, priorities, and performance expectations.
• Build best practices, playbooks, and standardized workflows across the vendor management function.
• Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Partner with leadership to support workforce planning and future capability needs.

6. Cross-Functional Partnership & Enablement

• Partner with Localization Operations and Delivery teams to ensure vendor readiness, capacity planning, and successful execution.
• Collaborate with AI/ML, Engineering, and QA teams to align vendor capabilities with evolving multilingual AI requirements.
• Support Sales, Solutions, and Pre-Sales teams by providing vendor capability insights, feasibility input, and cost models for proposals.
• Work with Finance on budgeting, forecasting, and vendor spend optimization.

7. Tools, Systems & Process Optimization

• Oversee global vendor databases and ensure accurate, auditable records.
• Drive continuous improvement in vendor onboarding, evaluation, automation, and reporting.
• Support adoption of tooling related to TMS, vendor management systems, AI workflow platforms, and analytics dashboards.

Qualifications

Required

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Supply Chain, Languages, Localization, HR, or related field (or equivalent experience).
• 5 years of experience in Vendor Management, Localization Operations, AI Data Operations, or Procurement within a global environment.
• Proven experience managing vendors across localization and multilingual AI workflows (human + AI).
• Demonstrated people management experience, including coaching and performance management.
• Strong commercial negotiation, contract management, and stakeholder leadership skills.
• Solid understanding of global compliance, data protection, and vendor risk frameworks.
• Excellent communication, analytical, and decision-making skills.

Preferred

• Experience managing global, distributed vendor management or resource management teams.
• Familiarity with MT, MTPE, LQA frameworks, AI annotation standards, and LLM evaluation workflows.
• Experience with multimodal data (text, audio, speech, vision).
• Knowledge of GDPR, SOC 2, ISO 27001, or similar frameworks.
• Background working in large multilingual organizations or language technology companies.

Centific is an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, age, mental or physical disability, medical condition, sex (including pregnancy), gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, familial status, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements.