Localization Manager

proton tehnologies; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Flexible working

Lunches and snacks in office

London office collaboration

Health coverage for employees

Job summary

Proton Technologies AG is hiring for a Localization Lead to own end-to-end localization programs across product strings, marketing assets and lifecycle emails. You will coordinate with product, design, engineering, marketing and legal to deliver high-quality localizations on fixed release dates, while optimizing vendor performance and translating cost efficiency.

You are fluent in English and at least one other language, comfortable with TMS/CAT tools, and experienced in managing multi-market

Qualifications

• Experience owning localization projects end-to-end with multi-market launches.
• Proficient with TMS and CAT tools and localization standards.
• Strong vendor management, quality tracking and cost control.

Responsibilities

• Own the lifecycle for localization portfolios across product and marketing.
• Coordinate with Product, Design, Engineering, Marketing and Legal on releases.
• Manage budgets, track translation costs, and flag drift early.
• Build and maintain a vendor bench with SLAs and NDAs.
• Ensure adaptation over transliteration for market-specific content.
• Serve as the linguistic and internationalization reference for stakeholders.
• Run localization experiments and measure impact with CRO framework.

Skills

Localization Lead

TMS hands-on

Vendor management

Data-driven decisions

English proficiency

Tools

TMS

CAT tools

Job description

Join Proton and build a better internet where privacy is the default

Proton was founded in 2014 by scientists from CERN on a simple truth: privacy is a fundamental human right. Since then, we've built the world's largest encrypted email service (Proton Mail) and expanded into Proton VPN, Proton Drive, Proton Pass, and Proton Calendar — tools used by millions globally to protect their freedom, fight censorship, and keep their data safe. In some situations, Proton has literally helped save lives.

We are profitable, independent (no VC control), and selectively hire from the top ~1% of applicants. Our 700+ team members from 50+ countries come from leading organizations and elite academic backgrounds. We move fast, keep hierarchy light, and prioritize impact over optics. If you want to do meaningful work with exceptionally high-caliber people, this is it. Check our open-source projects here.

The Localization Team

The Localization team makes sure Proton works, and sells, in every market we serve. We own how product launches and growth content reach people in their own language and culture — in-app strings, pricing pages, CRM email flows, app store listings and marketing materials. Some products in our portfolio are mature and others are launching now, so several workstreams run at once against fixed release dates.

We work in product pods rather than one shared queue. Each manager owns a portfolio end-to-end — releases, vendors, quality, stakeholders — with a trained backstop in a neighbouring pod, so no product ever depends on one person being online. Which products sit in which pod shifts as the roadmap shifts; how we work doesn't.

Beyond delivery, we're building the practice that proves localization's commercial impact through data and experimentation. You'll do well here if you want to own outcomes end-to-end and can handle a vendor escalation and a go/no-go call on the same day.

What You’ll Do

• Own the lifecycle for your portfolio. From string freeze to general availability — initiation, planning, execution, closure. Coordinate Product, Design, Engineering, Marketing and Support against fixed release dates, and be the person who knows whether a locale is actually ready to ship.
• Run the machine. Administer our TMS and CAT workflows, keep handoffs clean between stakeholders, and maintain the assets that make repeatable launches possible: scoping models, timelines, locale-readiness checklists, go/no-go criteria.
• Keep your spend on track. The Localization Lead owns the budget; you look after your corner of it. Track translation costs per product and per language, reconcile monthly, and flag drift while it's still cheap to correct — not after it becomes an overrun that needs explaining.
• Build and manage the vendor bench. Recruit, pre-qualify and test suppliers and freelancers for your portfolio; maintain SLAs, NDAs and documentation; track quality and turnaround; run quarterly business reviews. Escalate to the Localization Lead, and pull in Legal and Finance when a blocker needs them.
• Ensure adaptation, not transliteration. Growth-facing content — CRM and lifecycle email flows, campaign landing pages, marketplace listings, pricing, signup and feature messaging — gets rewritten for the market, not converted word for word. You brief and review the adaptation, and you flag cultural and regulatory risk before release. Where your portfolio includes lifecycle email, you also own its template internationalization and content logic.
• Be the reference point. You are the linguistic and internationalization contact for your stakeholder group — Product Managers, UX Writers, Marketers, Developers and Support — and you raise the bar beyond it through retrospectives, corrective-action reports and the occasional proof of concept.
• Ship experiments, then measure them. With the CRO team, execute localized variants and campaign content inside your portfolio. As the area grows, you take on more: framing localization hypotheses, interpreting results within the growth team's experimentation framework, and segmenting funnel data by locale with Product Analytics to find where language and culture cost us conversions.

Who You Are

• You've owned localization projects or programmes end-to-end, including multi-workstream, multi-market launches against dates you couldn't move.
• You work in English daily (B2–C2) and you have native or professional working proficiency in at least one other language. Any language counts — what we're really testing is whether you've lived long enough inside a second language to tell copy that sounds native from copy that's merely correct.
• You can administer TMS and CAT tools hands-on, and you know localization best practice and internationalization standards well enough to argue about them.
• You've managed vendors and freelancers against quality, turnaround and cost targets, and you've watched a spend line closely enough to catch it moving before anyone asked you to.
• You're comfortable with operational data: you define the right metrics, watch them, and change behaviour when they move.

Nice to Have

• Hands-on experience running or contributing to A/B tests on localized surfaces.
• Localization inside a CRM or marketing-automation platform (transactional and lifecycle email, template logic).
• Experience supporting consumer and B2B product surfaces in the same portfolio.
• Exposure to MTPE pipelines, quality estimation, or automated LQA gating.
• Localizing content with regulatory stakes — legal updates, privacy disclosures, terms.

What We Offer

• Work that Matters: Millions of people trust Proton with their privacy. We answer only to our users — not advertisers, not investors with conflicting agendas, not governments.
• A Great Team: Diverse, collaborative, and tight-knit, with people from MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Caltech, Cambridge, ETH, and more.
• Technology: The right hardware and software to do your best work.
• Learning & Development: We invest in your growth. Proton is one of the fastest ways to accelerate your career — real challenges, real ownership, from day one.
• Employee Benefits: Strong health coverage, solid retirement options, generous leave, and wellness support.
• Stock Options: From day one, you have a real stake in what we're building. When Proton wins, you win.
• In-Person Collaboration: Offices across Geneva, Zürich, Barcelona, London, and more. You'll spend most of your time collaborating face-to-face.
• Food: Lunch and snacks on us every day in the office.
• Transport: We cover public transport, bike allowances, or parking — whichever works for you.
• Flexible Working: You own your schedule. Outcomes matter more than clock-in times.

Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

At Proton, we believe diversity drives innovation and strengthens our mission to provide privacy as a default for all. We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where all individuals — regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, physical ability, or socio-economic background — feel valued and empowered.

If you need any extra support or reasonable adjustments during the hiring process, please let your talent partner know.

Candidate Privacy Notice

When you apply for a position at Proton Technologies AG, your information is stored in Greenhouse in accordance with its Service Privacy Policy. This information is used to evaluate your suitability for the posted position and may be retained for future roles.

If we no longer have a legitimate business need to process your information, we will either delete or anonymise it. For questions about your data, contact: [e-mail]

Proton does not accept unsolicited CVs from any sources other than directly from candidates.

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