Hiring in North America
The firm's primary market and the deepest one in the industry: the largest concentration of language technology and AI buyers, the strongest demand for machine learning and language data roles, and a healthcare interpreting sector where language access is a legal requirement rather than a discretionary spend.
Demand
What is driving demand here?
North America is where the language industry is buying. It holds the deepest pool of machine learning, NLP and language data roles, the enterprise localization buyers behind them, and a healthcare and public-sector interpreting market whose demand is regulatory. Federal language services spending has contracted; healthcare and state, local and education buying are where the growth is.
Specialisms
Which specialisms concentrate in North America?
The parts of the industry with the densest presence in this market, each with its own hiring problem.
Roles
What roles do we place in North America?
Chief revenue officer
Owns all revenue functions across a language business — sales, marketing and customer success — and the commercial strategy for a market being reshaped by AI.
VP of sales / VP of marketingChief revenue officerCEO / managing director
Enterprise account executive
Carries a quota selling language services or language technology into enterprise accounts — a consultative, long-cycle, multi-stakeholder sale that rewards genuine domain credibility.
Account executiveEnterprise / strategic AESales director
Business development director
Opens new markets, partnerships and revenue lines for a language business — new logos, new verticals, channel and alliance relationships, rather than managing an existing book.
Business development managerBusiness development directorVP of business development / CRO
What is distinctive
What is distinctive about hiring here?
Compensation is the highest in the vertical set, and language businesses hiring machine learning and research talent are bidding against technology companies with far deeper pockets. Winning usually depends on the problem and the data rather than the package.
Healthcare and public-sector interpreting hire against credentialing and compliance requirements as much as against skills, which changes the profile of the operators who run those networks.
Questions
Hiring in North America: common questions
- Why is the US your primary market?
- Two reasons. It is the deepest market for language technology, AI and language data hiring, and its recruitment fees are materially higher than the UK's, so the same work returns more. The firm is Cardiff-based but runs most of its searches across the United States, nationally rather than in any one city.
- Is federal government work still active?
- Less so. Federal language services spending has contracted sharply. Healthcare interpreting and state, local and education buying are where demand is now concentrated, and teams built for federal contracting do not transfer to those buyers without change.
How we hire
Four practices, every market
- Executive searchRetained search for the roles that set direction.
- Talent searchSpecialist individual contributors and middle management.
- Interim expertiseContract and fractional cover for a defined piece of work.
- Growth advisoryDelivery model change, AI adoption, and the org design that follows.
Elsewhere
The other 5 markets
- United Kingdom and IrelandThe firm's home market. Cardiff-based, working across London, Dublin and the regional technology clusters.
- DACH and continental EuropeGermany, Austria and Switzerland alongside the wider European market. Dense in established LSPs and translation technology vendors.
- NordicsSmall by headcount, disproportionately strong in speech technology and natural language processing.
- Asia PacificGaming localization, language data operations and the fastest-growing demand for multilingual AI capability.
- Latin AmericaMedia localization and a growing base of remote localization operations talent serving North American clients.
Hiring in North America?
A consultation is a call about the role, the local market and what the shape of the team should be.