Job Title: Senior Manager, Research Program and Technical Delivery
Location: Africa, remote, with continental and global travel as required.
Job Type: Contract (with potential for long-term extension)
Compensation Range: $65,000 – $75,000 USD before applicable taxes and statutory deductions Final compensation will be determined based on location, experience, and engagement type.
Benefits: Remote working set-up support
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, and we encourage early submissions.
About Masakhane
Masakhane is a pan-African initiative aimed at tackling the under-representation of African languages in natural language processing (NLP) and AI. Our mission is to bring together researchers, technologists, linguists, and community members from across the continent to collaborate on AI that is inclusive and representative of Africa’s linguistic diversity. By working collectively, we are democratizing access to cutting-edge AI research and contributing to the global growth of African NLP.
About Masakhane African Languages Hub
The Masakhane African Languages Hub (“the Hub”) is a new initiative to address the critical underrepresentation and misrepresentation of African languages in artificial intelligence (AI). Anchored by the Masakhane Research Foundation (MRF), the Hub will develop community-centered open-source datasets, models, and use cases to catalyze innovation in sectors such as healthcare, education, and agriculture. With a vision to unlock AI’s benefits for over 1 billion Africans, the Hub fosters community-driven approaches and long-term, sustainable partnerships across the African NLP ecosystem.
Our goal is to empower one billion Africans by 2029 with locally relevant AI tools and resources, unlocking opportunities for economic development, local innovation, and the preservation of Africa’s linguistic heritage.
Position Overview
The Senior Manager, Research Program and Technical Delivery will play a key role in supporting the design, coordination, and technical delivery of Masakhane’s research programs focused on African language datasets, NLP, and inclusive AI.
This position will work closely with Principal Investigators, technical leads, research teams, partner institutions, fiscal hosts, and funding partners to translate research priorities into well structured workplans, technical milestones, deliverables, and learning outputs. The role will support the coordination of multi-country research initiatives, ensuring that research activities are methodologically sound, technically welltracked, and delivered in alignment with agreed timelines, quality expectations, and reporting requirements.
The successful candidate will help strengthen Masakhane’s research delivery systems, including tools for tracking datasets, model development activities, evaluation workflows, research outputs, community participation, and technical documentation. While Principal Investigators and technical leads will retain responsibility for scientific direction and final technical decisions, this role will ensure that research processes are well-coordinated, evidence-informed, and effectively documented.
This is a senior role suited to someone who combines strong research program management experience with an understanding of AI/NLP research ecosystems, data-driven project delivery, and multi-country collaboration.
Key Responsibilities
- Research Program and Technical Delivery
- Coordinate the delivery of multiple concurrent AI/NLP research projects focused on African language technologies.
- Translate research objectives into structured workplans, technical milestones, deliverables, timelines, and progress-tracking tools.
- Work with Principal Investigators and technical leads to monitor dataset development, annotation workflows, model development activities, evaluation processes, and research outputs.
- Support the identification of technical dependencies, delivery risks, and quality assurance considerations across research workstreams.
- Provide regular research delivery updates to leadership, including progress against technical milestones, risks, outputs, and emerging learning.
- Research Partnerships, Grants and Technical Coordination
- Serve as a coordination point between research teams, Principal Investigators, technical leads, funding partners, fiscal hosts, and institutional stakeholders.
- Support alignment between funded research commitments, technical workplans, budgets, deliverables, and reporting requirements.
- Track research outputs against grant milestones, including datasets, papers, tools, models, community outputs, and technical documentation.
- Coordinate with finance and operations teams to ensure that funding flows and payment schedules support research delivery timelines.
- Support donor and partner reporting by consolidating technical progress updates, research outputs, risks, and learning.
- Technical Review, Mentorship and Quality Assurance Coordination
- Coordinate review of technical workflows in collaboration with technical leads.
- Support the design and administration of review criteria for research proposals, datasets, annotation processes, model outputs, and technical documentation.
- Coordinate mentorship support for grantees, fellows, or research teams, including needs assessments, mentor matching, progress tracking, and documentation of learning.
- Ensure review and mentorship processes are transparent, well documented and aligned with Masakhane’s research quality and inclusion principles
- Research Learning,Monitoring, & Data Management
- Develop and maintain research tracking systems, including dashboards, Gantt charts, milestone trackers, dataset trackers, and output repositories.
- Track and analyze data on research participation, language coverage, regional representation, gender distribution, thematic domains, datasets, models, and publications.
- Consolidate research outputs, technical documentation, lessons learned, and evidence products to support institutional learning and external reporting.
- Support the development of learning briefs, research summaries, technical progress reports, and knowledge products.
- Ensure research documentation is organized, accessible, and useful for future replication, scaling, and learning.
- Research Community and Knowledge Exchange
- Oversee the logistical planning of project-related events (e.g., webinars, kick-offs, workshops).
- Ensure clear and consistent communication across distributed research teams.
- Support cross-project coordination and knowledge sharing.
- Research Systems and Institutional Development
- Contribute to the operational development of Masakhane’s formal legal entity.
- Design standard operating procedures and documentation templates.
- Support the establishment of sustainable administrative systems to enable long-term growth.
- Ensure Masakhane principles of Ubuntu and values of equity on gender, geographical diversity and language representation are core to to work
Scope Clarification
The Senior Manager, Research Program and Technical Delivery will not be responsible for scientific decision-making, technical evaluations, or defining research outputs. These responsibilities remain with Principal Investigators and technical leads.
Requirements
Fluency in English and French is required. Proficiency in Portuguese and/or Arabic, as well as one or more African languages, would be considered a strong asset.
Experience
- 5+ years of experience in research administration, program management, and operations within nonprofit, academic, or startup environments.
- Proven ability to manage multi-country, multi-stakeholder research initiatives, coordinating technical and research teams across institutions and communities.
- Skilled in research program management, including planning, milestone tracking, reporting, and knowledge management.
- Experience translating research objectives into actionable workplans, deliverables, and tracking systems to support efficient delivery and learning.
- Strong background in AI, NLP, data science, and digital innovation, with familiarity across research and applied contexts.
- Demonstrated experience in grant-funded and donor-funded projects, including designing and improving operational systems to enhance performance and accountability.
- Excellent analytical, reporting, and communication skills able to synthesize complex technical outputs and risks for both specialist and non-technical audiences.
- Proficient in coordinating distributed remote and diverse teams, ensuring effective collaboration across linguistic, institutional, and cultural boundaries.
- Known for high attention to detail, documentation excellence, and effective management of multiple concurrent technical workstreams.
Preferable Skills
- Established networks within African AI, NLP, digital research, and open-source communities.
- Familiarity with research grant lifecycles, academic partnerships, and technical fellowship or grant programs.
- Experience with dataset development, annotation workflows, model evaluation, and open research repositories.
- Understanding of responsible and inclusive AI, language equity, gender-responsive research, and community-based research practices.
- Exposure to multilingual and low-resource language technology initiatives.
Values & Mindset
- Deeply aligned with Masakhane’s mission to advance African languages and inclusion in AI.
- A strategic and systems-minded thinker who translates vision into effective operations.
- Highly organized, proactive, and self-directed, thriving in remote and distributed environments.
- Transparent, accountable, and process-oriented, with a commitment to excellence and integrity.
- Collaborative and culturally attuned, able to work effectively across diverse African contexts.
Why Join Us
- Play a central leadership role in operationalizing one of Africa’s most visible AI research initiatives.
- Shape the administrative foundations of a growing pan-African research entity.
- Work alongside leading researchers and technologists across the continent.
- Contribute to high-impact work that advances linguistic equity and inclusive AI.
- Grow with an organization entering its next phase of institutional maturity.
Reporting Line
This position reports to the Director at the Masakhane African Languages Hub.
Application Process
Please submit your CV and a brief cover letter outlining your experience in research administration or program management, and how you would contribute to strengthening Masakhane’s operational systems.
Applications should be submitted via link