Voice AI Programme Manager

Crane AI Labs is hiring a Voice AI Programme Manager based in Nairobi to lead the coordination and delivery of our voice AI initiatives across East Africa.

You will manage relationships with partner organisations across agriculture, health, and public service delivery — ensuring they can integrate voice AI capabilities into their existing products and services. You will coordinate workshops, manage timelines, produce programme reports, and serve as the primary liaison between Crane AI Labs' technical team, partner startups, government stakeholders, and international programme counterparts.

This role is ideal for someone who understands the African AI and NLP ecosystem, has managed multi-partner technology programmes, and can operate at the intersection of technical delivery and institutional coordination. You will work alongside our engineering team building open-source, offline-first voice AI for African languages — starting with Swahili.

Responsibilities:

• Coordinate across multiple use case partners to ensure voice AI integration stays on track
• Manage programme timelines, deliverables, and reporting cycles
• Plan and execute workshops — logistics, invitations, attendance tracking, follow-up
• Liaise with government and institutional stakeholders in Kenya on programme alignment
• Produce monthly progress reports and programme documentation
• Coordinate event participation and logistics at major conferences
• Serve as the operational bridge between Crane AI Labs' technical team and external partners

Qualifications:

• Minimum 5 years experience managing technology, AI, or development programmes
• Familiarity with African NLP ecosystems and/or AI for social impact
• Proven track record coordinating multi-country or multi-partner projects
• Fluency in English and Swahili (additional African languages are a plus)
• Strong organisational, communication, and stakeholder engagement skills
• Experience with government or institutional coordination in East Africa preferred
• Proficiency in project management tools (Airtable, Notion, Google Workspace, etc.)
• Bachelor's degree in a relevant field; advanced degree preferred

What We Offer:

• A role at the centre of Africa's most ambitious voice AI programme
• Work alongside a team recognised by Google, UNDP, NVIDIA, the UK AI Safety Institute, and the Africa AI Council
• Access to world-class compute infrastructure for African language model development
• Opportunity to shape how 1 Billion offline Africans interact with AI in their own languages

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