Strategic Project Lead - Speech & Audio AI (London)

Appen 2; United States; Remote; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Appen seeks a Strategic Project Lead - Speech Audio to join our Operations organization, driving frontier AI data programs. You will own complex projects from planning through delivery, applying project management, domain expertise, and quality ownership to help clients build speech recognition systems, voice agents, and other AI applications.

You will collaborate with clients and internal teams to refine workflows, establish quality standards, and mentor Operations Specialists while shaping

Qualifications

• 1–2+ years in AI data operations, project coordination, or delivery, ideally in GenAI/frontier AI.
• Hands-on familiarity with at least one speech/audio/language/conversational AI workflow.
• Experience coordinating projects, managing stakeholders, and communicating with clients.
• Understanding data quality, annotation workflows, and QA methods.
• Ability to translate client requirements into clear guidelines, workflows, and standards.
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-moving environment.

Responsibilities

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

Skills

AI data operations

Project coordination

Delivery

Speech AI workflow

Stakeholder management

Client communication

Job description

About the Role

The Strategic Project Lead - Speech Audio will sit in Appen's Operations organization and support the development of frontier AI through high-quality data programs for leading AI companies. We’re looking for someone with experience in speech, audio, or language data to own complex projects from planning through delivery.

You’ll combine project management, domain expertise, and quality ownership to help clients build and improve speech recognition systems, voice agents, and other AI applications. You’ll work closely with clients and internal teams to solve problems, refine workflows, and keep pace with a rapidly evolving AI landscape.

Your Impact

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

What You Bring

• 1-2+ years of experience in AI data operations, project coordination, or delivery, ideally in a GenAI or frontier AI environment.
• Hands-on familiarity with at least one speech, audio, language, or conversational AI workflow.
• Experience coordinating projects or workstreams, managing stakeholders, and communicating with clients.
• Understanding of data quality, annotation workflows, and quality assurance methods.
• Ability to turn client requirements into clear guidelines, workflows, and quality standards.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-moving environment.
• Interest in current AI developments and how speech, audio, and voice-agent technologies are evolving.

Nice to Have

• Experience with ASR transcription, speaker diarization, acoustic annotation, or TTS evaluation.
• Familiarity with voice-agent scripts, IVR, dialogue design, turn-taking, or conversational evaluation.
• Experience with localization, cross-locale consistency, CJK languages, or low-resource languages.
• Bilingual or multilingual capabilities, particularly German or a Nordic language.

Why You’ll Love Working Here

At Appen, we foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and excellence. We value curiosity, accountability, and a commitment to delivering the highest quality AI solutions for frontier models.

You’ll work on complex challenges that shape the future of AI across industries and geographies, alongside talented people in a culture that values humility over ego. You'll have the flexi