Project Manager

About Andovar:
Andovar builds large-scale multilingual data collection and annotation datasets used to train ASR, TTS, and other AI models — for example, multi-locale telephony/IVR speech corpora spanning dozens of languages, with strict audio specifications and heavy structured annotation. Pricing these projects is genuinely hard: every quote is a puzzle of interacting cost drivers, and nearly every new project surfaces a factor we have not priced before.

We are looking for a rigorous, analytical mind to own the deconstruction and costing of these quotes building them from first principles and stress-testing quotes prepared by others.This is not a client-facing role. It is for someone intellectually curious to master every layer of the data collection and annotation industry, and who enjoys taking a messy, ambiguous scope and resolving it into a clean, defensible cost model.

Key Responsibilities

Account and delivery ownership

• Own 2–4 complex, high-volume accounts end-to-end — including new-client pilots where speed and first impressions decide whether the account scales.

• Install early-truth checkpoints on every project: pilot batches, week-one acceptance-rate checks, and contributor-funnel math, so wrong assumptions surface while they are still cheap to fix.

• Run delivery against explicit capacity math — what one PM, one language, one contributor pool can produce per day — instead of gut-feel commitments.

Client leadership

• Lead client communication for your accounts: pilot reviews, scope negotiation, delivery forecasts and risk calls. You keep control of scope in writing.

• Translate ambiguous client requirements into precise operational instructions, acceptance criteria and QA workflows.

• Handle unknowns openly: surface them early, convert them into questions with owners and dates, and manage client expectations while they are being resolved.

• Proactively reach out — to client stakeholders and to internal departments (recruitment, vendor management, engineering, finance) — to get what your project needs. You chase; you don't wait.

Pre-sales, commercial and margin

• Participate in pre-sales for your domain: quotation, sampling and pilot scoping alongside Sales — and give a feasibility verdict before we commit, not after.

• Track project-level financials — budget, vendor spend, forecast vs. actual — and flag margin erosion early enough to act on it.

• Own the invoicing step on your accounts: accurate, on-time invoicing inputs, and follow-up with the client through to payment.

Team leadership

• Lead a pod of project coordinators, interns and freelance PMs across countries; design shift coverage and handovers so client hours (including US/EU evenings) are covered without points of failure.

• Mentor juniors to independently run standard projects, so senior time stays on client-facing and high-complexity work.

• Own escalations on your accounts and resolve them; escalate upward with options, not problems.

Process and instrumentation

• Improve SOPs, trackers and reporting so status reflects reality — acceptance rates, throughput and margin visible weekly, not discovered at invoicing.

What we're looking for

• Agency-side experience is mandatory: 5+ years delivering projects for external clients in an agency or client-services environment — software development, research/custdev, data collection or related — of which 2+ years at senior level.

• Owned client relationships directly — expectations, escalations and scope negotiations, not just the trackers. You can show how you kept a client confident through a project going sideways.

• A proactive operating style with evidence: you reach out to client stakeholders and internal departments to unblock your projects, surface unknowns early, and turn them into named risks with owners and dates.

• Managed distributed freelance, vendor or subcontractor delivery teams, including performance management.

• Ran projects with budget or financial responsibility: budgeting, forecasting, vendor spend control, and invoicing follow-through with clients.

• Participated in pre-sales: quotes, proposals, samples or pilots — and can talk about one you shaped.

• Fluent professional English, written and spoken (C1+); confident client-facing communication.

• Based in Asia time zones (UTC+5 to UTC+9), with flexibility for evening calls with US/EU clients.

• Advanced command of project tracking and reporting tools (Excel plus Airtable, Jira, Asana, Monday.com or similar).

What we offer

• Remote-first role with a distributed, international team.

• Senior scope with real decision authority — and a visible path toward Program Manager / Head-of-delivery responsibility as the division grows.

• Direct exposure to frontier AI companies and the fastest-growing segment of the language industry.

• Compensation built for owners: base salary plus a bonus on each successful project close

• Unlimited free refills coffee