Telugu Team Lead

In this hourly, remote contractor role, you will work as a Telugu Quality Assurance Lead (QAL) to oversee quality, consistency, and trainer performance across Telugu AI training projects. You will review AI-generated Telugu content and trainer/QA work, evaluate output quality against project guidelines, provide precise written feedback, and ensure that all contributors follow the expected quality standards.

You will assess work for accuracy, fluency, grammar, spelling, tone, cultural appropriateness, meaning preservation, instruction-following, formatting, and adherence to project-specific rubrics. You will spot recurring quality issues, communicate updates to trainers and QAs, support onboarding, maintain documentation, and help activate contributors who are not working consistently. This role requires strong Telugu and English skills, excellent attention to detail, structured communication, and the ability to manage quality workflows across remote teams.

This role is with SME Careers, a fast-growing AI Data Services company and subsidiary of SuperAnnotate, delivering training data for many of the world’s largest AI companies and foundation-model labs. Your Telugu quality leadership will directly help improve the world’s premier AI models by ensuring that Telugu training data is natural, accurate, culturally appropriate, well-documented, and aligned with client expectations.

Selection process involves an AI interview, a domain-specific task, and an interview with a recruiter.

Key responsibilities

• Quality monitoring: Spot-check Telugu items, identify quality issues, provide ongoing feedback through DMs, and escalate recurring or critical issues.
• Trainer and QA communication: Update trainers and QAs on Discord about new item guidelines, project changes, workflow updates, and quality expectations.
• Question handling: Respond to trainer/QA questions clearly and promptly, especially around Telugu wording, register, translation fidelity, cultural context, Andhra Pradesh vs Telangana usage, and edge cases.
• Trainer/QA activation management: DM contributors who are inactive or not working, encourage activation, track follow-ups, and flag availability issues when needed.
• Documentation: Create and maintain Telugu project documentation, including style guides, trackers, FAQs, quality notes, examples, honeypots, and onboarding materials.
• Onboarding and training: Schedule and run onboarding/training calls with trainers and QAs to explain project expectations, workflows, rubrics, quality standards, and Telugu-specific style requirements.
• Quality alignment: Ensure all trainers and QAs apply Telugu language guidelines consistently and understand updates as projects evolve.
• Process improvement: Identify recurring quality gaps, propose workflow improvements, and help build scalable QA processes for Telugu-language projects.

Your profile

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Telugu, Linguistics, Translation, Communications, Journalism, English, Education, Quality Assurance, or a relevant domain/related field.
• Native or near-native Telugu proficiency with strong reading and writing skills.
• Strong grasp of the English language to follow project guidelines, communicate with teams, and provide clear feedback in English.
• 3+ years of professional experience in Telugu writing, editing, translation, localization, content QA, AI training, education, annotation, or related language-review workflows.
• Strong understanding of Telugu grammar, spelling conventions, punctuation, tone, register, regional variation, and cultural context.
• Ability to evaluate Telugu content against detailed rubrics and identify issues such as mistranslation, literal phrasing, unnatural tone, hallucinated claims, ambiguity, or inconsistent terminology.
• Experience leading or supporting remote teams of trainers, annotators, reviewers, editors, or QAs is strongly preferred.
• Comfortable working in fast-moving remote environments using tools such as Discord, Google Sheets, Google Docs, trackers, dashboards, and project management systems.
• Highly detail-oriented and organized, with the ability to maintain style guides, FAQs, trackers, onboarding materials, honeypots, and other quality documentation.
• Experience with AI training, data annotation, large language models, prompt/response evaluation, or rubric-based LLM QA is a strong plus.

🌍 Geographic Availability This role is available to qualified experts globally. However, as a U.S.-based company, SME Careers complies with U.S. export control and sanctions regulations. Eligibility depends on your country of residence and any applicable trade restrictions. Some projects may have additional language or region-specific requirements.

💰 Pay Rate May Vary Based on Your Location Your actual compensation will be determined based on your location and local market conditions. See regional job listings for localized pay information, or the application process will clarify your specific rate.

If you're unsure whether you're eligible, proceed with the application—SME's screening will determine your jurisdiction status and applicable compensation.