Localization Program Manager

Job Description

Founded in August of 2008 and based in San Francisco, California, Airbnb is a trusted community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique travel experiences around the world. Whether an apartment for a night, a castle for a week, or a villa for a month, Airbnb allows people to Belong Anywhere through unique travel experiences at any price point, in more than 65,000 cities and over 191 countries. We promote a culture of curiosity, humanity, and creativity through our product, brand, and, most importantly, our people. We are currently seeking a Localization Program Manager to be based in our London office.

Posting date: 1/10/2019

Closing date: 29/10/2019

Location: London

Salary: Competitive

Responsibilities

• Manage end-to-end one or more localization programs
• Be the principal liaison between Language Specialists in regional offices and product teams.
• Own local language experience and remove all risks from international releases:
• Responsible for interfacing with all relevant product teams and delivering on-time, high-quality and cost-effective localized assets.
• Responsible for continuously improving processes and services across the localization team functions, our translation vendors, all other internal Airbnb functions in collaboration with the Internationalization engineering team.
• Manage processes & deliverables with our translation vendors
• Proactively work closely with all internal Airbnb teams and functions to ensure we deliver world-class globalized products that are culturally-relevant and linguistically-appropriate.
• Advise/educate Airbnb’s business unit teams on globalization best practices
• Accountable for all localization deliverables to all relevant requesting teams
• Ensure high quality, cost-effective and efficient product localization
• Provide strategic input on scope, resourcing and sequencing of large bodies of work
• Identify and predict obstacles, collisions and risk to projects & programs across multiple teams and seek solutions to eliminate them
• Ensure pertinent information is communicated and understood throughout the global team and relevant product development teams
• Own the creation and management of high level Localization project & program timelines
• Provide up-to-date visibility into large projects, team performance and progress against our team goals
• Continuously provide feedback to evolve our localization process and tools to adapt to changing needs. Includes communication structures, project templates, and adoption of new tools
• Facilitate strategic stakeholder meetings including preparing agendas, keeping conversation on-track and establishing action items and owners

Requirements

• Significant experience working in Globalization Operations, Globalization Technology or Globalization Program Management, translation quality, helping core product teams to recognize and integrate international requirements.
• Track record of working at a local subsidiary/office in a global enterprise liaising the needs of local marketing teams to central US product teams for the purpose of ensuring the success of international launches.
• Track record of managing and shipping complex and high-quality globalized products in a digital product org
• Deep knowledge of the localization process and what it takes to create truly local conten t
• Previous working experience in translation and native level fluency in Chinese, Japanese or Korean beside English is a strong advantage.
• Background establishing systems
• Demonstrable skills and experience in negotiation, presentation and conflict resolution
• Experience interacting with senior leadership
• Competent with JIRA, Asana or equivalent. Must be able to manage a ticket queue

Preferred Skills

• supporting teams, and developing relationships
• Track record of being a self-starter, self-motivated outcome oriented individual who seeks ownership and accountability.
• A high-level of attention to detail with excellent organizational skills
• Comfortable with ambiguity in a fluid organization
• Seeks out opportunities for self-development and continuing education
• Passionate and enthusiastic about excellence and attention to detail

Airbnb is committed to working with the best and brightest people from the broadest talent pool possible. We believe a diversity of ideas fosters innovation and engagement, and allows us to attract the best people, and to develop the best products, services and solutions. Qualified individuals from all walks of life are encouraged to apply. Apply now