Program Manager — FDE & Managed Outcomes
At Phrase, we help open the door to global business by providing the world’s leading Language Intelligence Platform.
The Phrase Platform combines AI, agentic orchestration, and a headless, API-first architecture in one composable system. Beyond translation, it orchestrates and adapts content to culture, audience, channel, brand voice, and intended outcome in any language, for every audience. It applies the context that makes content perform in every market: quality standards, glossaries, prior translations, and cultural nuance. Every team, in every region, can ship content that is on-brand, on-point, and ready for any audience.
Phrase gives enterprises the intelligence to automate workflows, the freedom to connect their own tools and engines, and the control to govern global content at scale.
With a global team based in our offices, and remote colleagues across Europe, the UK, the US, and the APAC region, Phrase offers an international environment built on collaboration, innovation, and shared purpose.
Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) and Managed Outcomes is where Phrase stops selling software and starts delivering results — AI pipeline deployments, custom integrations, automation scripts, and hands-on engineering embedded directly into a customer’s workflow. The motion is real and working, but it’s early: a handful of live engagements, a scoping-to-delivery process held together by judgment and goodwill, and demand growing faster than the team’s ability to run it cleanly. This role exists to turn that into a system — clear ownership, visible status, and a steady drumbeat that keeps FDE engineers and customers moving in the same direction. You’ll sit at the centre of a small, high-trust group spanning FDE engineers, customer-facing CSMs and AEs, and leadership, and you’ll build the AI-native automation that removes the operational grind as the portfolio scales.
What you’ll be responsible for:
- Own the end-to-end run of FDE and managed-outcomes engagements, from signed scope through delivery to clean close-out and handoff
- Hold the single source of truth for engagement status, milestones, owners, and risks, and keep it genuinely current rather than a stale tracker nobody trusts
- Run the cadence — standups, check-ins, and reviews that are short, useful, and drive decisions rather than recap them
- Keep FDE engineers unblocked by surfacing dependencies early, chasing down decisions, and protecting their focus from churn
- Be the steady point of contact for customers during delivery, owning timelines and managing expectations so what’s promised is what gets delivered
- Translate between worlds — turn engineer-speak into customer-clear updates, and turn fuzzy customer asks into scoped, deliverable work
- Catch drift early, raising slipping timelines or creeping scope before they become a problem, internally and with the customer
- Design and continuously improve the scoping-to-delivery process so it scales with deal volume without becoming bureaucratic
- Build feedback loops between what’s sold, what’s delivered, and what’s learned, so each engagement makes the next one sharper
- Build and maintain lightweight AI agents and automation that handle status chasing, reporting, follow-ups, and handoff prep
- Instrument the portfolio so status, throughput, risk, and outcomes are visible and trustworthy without manual assembly
- Give leadership an always-current view of the FDE and managed-outcomes portfolio, spotting recurring patterns and proposing fixes rather than just observations
What you need:
- Several years running complex, cross-functional programs or engagements — ideally in a delivery, professional services, FDE, or technical PM context
- A track record of bringing order to messy, early-stage operations, turning tribal knowledge into systems
- Genuinely AI-native — you already automate your own work, build agents and workflows, and reach for AI as a default tool rather than a last resort; this is a core requirement, not a nice-to-have
- Strong owner’s instinct — you chase loose ends, hold the line on commitments, and don’t need to be told twice
- Skilled at managing both engineers and customers — technical enough to earn engineers’ trust, polished enough to own a customer relationship
- Comfortable with ambiguity and building from early traction — you see a half-built process as an opportunity, not a frustration
- A clear, concise communicator who makes complex status legible to any audience
- Background in localization, language AI, or a technical SaaS delivery environment (desirable)
- Experience standing up or scaling a PM or delivery function from early traction (desirable)
What you’ll get:
- Work experience in a successful and growing global SaaS company
- Be part of an international team in Europe, APAC, and the Americas
- Expert colleagues in their field who are determined to build the best localization platform on the market, creating a world where language never limits opportunity
- An agile work environment, where it is encouraged to take smart risks
- Take part in a culture full of trust, support and loyalty, where respectful and open feedback is valued, and diversity is fully embraced
- A positive, open-minded, and innovative atmosphere
- Support in your professional development and personal career goals
What’s on top:
- 4 Company holidays additional to your regular holidays (1 day per quarter where the entire company is off to celebrate our achievements).
- In addition, the company also provides employees with a Christmas break to allow you to spend time with family and friends without use of your vacation allocation.
- Your birthday is off because it is important to celebrate you as well.
- 2 Giveback days where you can support the local community, volunteer, and/or participate in charity events and activities.
- Professional and extensive onboarding.
- Enterprise Claude Licence
- Additional local benefits depending on the entity you’re hired at, just ask your Talent Acquisition Partner
Phrase is committed to ensuring equal pay for equal work and work of equal value between women and men. Our aim is that our workforce will be truly representative of all sections of society and that each worker feels respected and able to give their best. The job requirements and salary range for this job have been established through a gender-neutral job evaluation and classification process. This process objectively assesses the skills, responsibility, effort and working conditions required for each job. This systematic approach ensures fair pay regardless of who performs the work. We welcome applications from all qualified candidates regardless of their sex, race or ethnicity, disability, religion/belief, sexual orientation, gender identity or age. We value and welcome different perspectives, experiences and backgrounds as we believe that these differences make our team even stronger on our mission of opening the door to global business by giving everybody access to the content they need in the language they speak.