Language Office Application Specialist

About Language Delivery Technology Services
The Language Office Application Specialist is a valuable member of the Language Delivery Technology Services (LDTS) team. Thanks to its global presence within SDL, LDTS works closely with SDL technology users to deliver innovative technical solutions in response to a wide range of requirements

Language Delivery Technology Services - Mission Statement
The Language Delivery Technology Services Team provide outstanding service to the SDL Language Delivery organization and by extension to their customers by offering direct support, application set up and optimization and process improvements.

About the Role
This is a hands-on position that requires an excellent communicator with a solid ability to work as a team. The successful candidate will be responsible for supporting a large number of users in a fast-paced environment, initially responding to support tickets and undertaking an immediate effort in order to resolve support issues, provide guidance on best practices, collect feedback on translation productivity tools from Language Office stakeholders and act as a bridge between language delivery and translation productivity tools development. Through tasks and projects, the candidate will apply existing knowledge of the translation the technology, the products and skills, as well as ensure excellent outcome.

The ideal candidate will be highly motivated and will need to have a solid background on translation production and linguistic processes.

Key responsibilities include
Support activities:
o Provide an initial response to support tickets raised by the Language Office users
o Participate or own technical issues raised by Language Offices and ensure they are actioned in a timely manner, as per the SLAs.
o Provide technical support on issues which may have been escalated by more junior members of the team and often require actions from other SDL technology departments to achieve a successful resolution.
o Mentor and guide junior member of the teams regarding support tasks.
o Share and document solutions for issues reported.
o Work on support requests raised by other members of the team, acting as first point of escalation, if needed.
o Actively participate in support escalation flows as requested to ensure that any issue gets to its corresponding fix eventually.

Activities related to translation productivity tools and processes:

o Consult and drive SDL’s Machine Translation Post-Edit initiatives with the Language Offices
o Participate and provide feedback in SDL Productivity tools beta programs
o Contribute and influence SDL OpenX development backlog for the Language Delivery priorities.
o Work closely with SDL Development teams on the upcoming releases of the SDL Productivity tools and orchestrate the roll-outs for the Language Offices.
o Communicate SDL Productivity tools releases, compatibility notifications and new features to the Language Offices.
o Foster consistency in Studio features and settings across different Language Offices.

Process and Knowledge Building activities:

o Be an active contributor of the SDL Community for the SDLs Language Productivity tools. 
o Foster Community usage across the whole organization, especially in LO level.
o Determine any process gaps within the team and design process improvements and documentation to cover these gaps.
o Ensures that relevant documentation is updated and maintained and that changes are communicated to the whole team.
o Document best practices to be followed by Language Offices regarding SDL Productivity Tools usage and communicate accordingly.

Communication and Relationships activities:

o Answer user questions about translation productivity tools and processes.
o Provide regular updates to users about their requests through excellent verbal and written communication.
o Provides guidance and mentoring to more junior members of the team.
o Acts as first point of escalation for less senior members of the team.
o Coordinates testing and implementation activities of translation tools in Language Offices if requested by other members of the team.
o Participates to cross-teams translation productivity initiatives aimed to streamline current processes, as requested
o Builds trustful relationships with Language Offices Technology user and  Technical teams in order to collaborate on solving issues
o Offers credible input to product support team on software bugs and enhancements

Additional Team Lead responsibilities (Optional)
At times, employees will be required to perform various people management responsibilities.  The specific responsibilities and the time allocated to each are determined on a case-by-case basis based on business needs. People management responsibilities include, but are not limited to the following:
o Resource scheduling – arranges back-ups, manages overtime and absences, administrative tasks to manage paid leaves and vacations
o Monitoring and reporting on people KPIs – overtime hours, time/utilization status against project codes/tasks. ? Facilitates local resources – obtains PCs/required equipment, coordinates systems access, arranges desk/office space
o Performance Management
o Overtime/utilisation – monitors overtime/utilisation via reports, identifies issues/causes of excessive overtime and takes/recommends corrective action.
o Goals and objectives – helps to set and/or clarify performance objectives.
o Feedback and coaching – provides on-going feedback and coaching to improve performance, identifies and addresses/escalates performance issues. Appraisals – provides input on performance review.
o Learning – identifies required training for new and existing team members, helps to secure learning programs/resources, co-ordinates the delivery of on-site and/or virtual learning.
o provides feedback and suggestions on appropriate developmental activities, coordinates on-the-job development, and facilitates networking and participation in developmental projects.
o Staff planning – identifies resourcing issues and raises to management, helps to create accurate staffing plans.
o Recruitment – interviews candidates, participates in recruitment activities such as job fairs and provides input on recruitment advertisements.
o On-boarding – mentors new hires, administers new hire process, ensures new hire has necessary equipment in a timely fashion, coordinates learning, and arranges introductory meetings with colleagues.

What to bring
o Acute attention to details
o Reflect, analyse and make suggestions on existing processes to increase the overall efficiency
o Advanced level of diplomacy and negotiation skills
o Proven methodical problem solving skills
o Keen interest for technology
o Medium hardware and networking knowledge
o Expert understanding of translation CAT tools and processes
o Advanced time management skills

Nice to have
o HTML and XML  fundamentals
o Any scripting, macros or programming skills
o Previous experience in support activities

You will be a great fit if
o You like a challenging but rewarding fast-paced environment
o You love working with some of the key actors in the localization department
o You love finding solutions to complex problems
o You are willing to develop your technical skills
o You like communication to a wide range of audiences (end users, SDL management, etc...)
o You feel rewarded when lending a hand to others

Education and experience
o University Degree
o Translation qualification or experience