Strategic Speech & Audio Project Leader

Appen Limited; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Appen is seeking a Strategic Project Lead – Speech & Audio to own complex frontiers AI data programs. You will combine project management, domain expertise, and quality ownership to help clients build speech recognition systems and voice agents, working with clients and internal teams to refine workflows.

You will guide end-to-end delivery, manage workshops and escalations, and translate client requirements into robust guidelines and QA processes, while mentoring Operations Specialists in a

Qualifications

• Experience in AI data operations or delivery roles.
• Hands-on exposure to speech/audio/language AI workflows.
• Ability to translate client needs into actionable guidelines and workflows.
• Experience coordinating multiple workstreams and stakeholders.
• Strong analytical and quality assurance capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end delivery including scope, timelines, budgets, staffing and risks.
• Manage client communications, status updates, workshops and escalations.
• Translate client requirements into annotation guidelines, workflows, tooling and quality standards.
• Define and monitor quality metrics (transcription accuracy, WER, diarization).
• Troubleshoot quality issues and resolve ambiguous requirements with clients.
• Provide domain expertise across speech and audio workflows and evaluation methods.
• Develop reusable guidelines, SOPs and QA frameworks while mentoring staff.
• Support new project scoping, pilots and capability development as speech/voice AI evolves.

Skills

AI data ops

Project coordination

Client communication

Quality ownership

Problem solving

Job description

Appen is seeking a Strategic Project Lead – Speech & Audio to own complex frontiers AI data programs. You will combine project management, domain expertise, and quality ownership to help clients build speech recognition systems and voice agents, working with clients and internal teams to refine workflows.

You will guide end-to-end delivery, manage workshops and escalations, and translate client requirements into robust guidelines and QA processes, while mentoring Operations Specialists in a