Manager, Sign Language Access & CART Services

Manager, Sign Language Access & CART Services

Universal Language Service, Inc. is seeking a hands-on manager to lead American Sign Language (ASL), signed-language, DeafBlind, Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART), captioning, transcription, and accessible-event operations.

Location - Bellevue, Washington On-Site

Base Salary - $100,000 annually

Incentive - Annual performance-based bonus

Commission - Up to 5%

Status - Full-time, salaried exempt

The Manager will lead an assigned team of schedulers or coordinators, W-2 staff interpreters, and operations-support employees, with staffing levels and team composition determined by operational and business needs, while governing a network of approximately 300 independent ASL, signed-language, Deaf interpreter, DeafBlind, CART, captioning, and accessibility providers.

The Manager serves as the primary department representative to customers, interpreters, captioners, community partners, and internal teams. This role is based in UniversalLanguage's Bellevue office. The normal work schedule is Monday through Friday, from 8am to 5pm with local travel, event support, and on-call support after normal business hours as needed.

What You Will Own:

• Daily ASL, signed-language, and CART request intake, scheduling, dispatch, confirmations, replacements, cancellations, event readiness, service recovery, verification, and closeout.
• Coverage planning for in-person, scheduled virtual, on-demand VRI, critical requests, Deaf interpreter and DeafBlind services, CART, captioning, transcription, and accessible events.
• Recruiting, interviewing, onboarding, credentialing, training, mentoring, readiness, retention, provider relations, rate recommendations, and specialty and regional capacity.
• Leadership, coaching, performance management, cross-training, succession, and accountability for assigned employees and schedulers.
• Interpreter and captioner quality, appropriate assignment matching, preferred providers, team requirements, ethics, complaints, investigations, corrective action, and customer communication.
• Government, healthcare, enterprise, education, legal, event, and direct-customer contract requirements, SLAs, reporting, privacy, HIPAA, security, and billing controls.
• Customer success and expansion. Lead discovery, implementations, business reviews, retention, and expansion into additional sites, departments, geographies, hours, use cases, and service modalities.
• New-customer development. Lead target-account outreach, discovery, ASL / signed-language / CART proposals and RFPs, pricing inputs, presentations, pilots, contracting support, implementation, and operational handoff.
• Accessible conferences, town halls, webinars, trainings, meetings, public meetings, and events, including interpreter and captioner teams, audiovisual systems, platforms, venues, preparation, and backups.
• Department dashboards, SOPs, staffing plans, budgets, forecasts, direct costs, contribution margin, invoice support, provider payments, and prevention of billing leakage.
• Accurate representation of UniversalLanguage in customer, provider, community, conference, and approved public meetings.

Occasional Hands-On ASL Interpreting:

Hands-on coverage is part of the role. After reasonable attempts to secure qualified staff, contractors, or approved backup resources, the Manager may occasionally provide ASL interpreting by video or in person as temporary bridge coverage. The Manager must be currently qualified, credentialed, trained, rested, conflict-free, approved by the customer when required, and working within demonstrated competence. This is secondary to management and is not routine production interpreting.

Required Qualifications:

• Five or more years of progressively responsible interpreting, accessibility, service operations, healthcare, government, or related experience, including at least three years of leadership responsibility.
• Professional-level ASL and English communication.
• Current RID, BEI, NAD legacy, or another recognized credential demonstrating qualification for occasional ASL interpreting coverage; ability to obtain and maintain applicable customer approval and Washington ODHH eligibility before accepting covered assignments.
• Experience with scheduling, recruiting, onboarding, training, provider networks, quality, complaints, customer meetings, contracts and service-level agreements, reporting, and process improvement.
• Knowledge of Deaf, DeafBlind, hard-of-hearing, late-deafened, interpreting, and captioning communities and effective communication practices.
• Financial and analytical capability, including budgets, pricing, direct costs, contribution margin, dashboards, and billing controls.
• Strong proposal, writing, presentation, customer-facing, coaching, negotiation, and change-management skills.
• Ability to work from Bellevue as required, travel, support events, and participate in an after-hours support as needed.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Prior leadership of ASL interpreter operations, accessibility programs, healthcare or government contracts, multi-state services, or large independent-provider networks.
• Current Washington ODHH approval and medical, mental health, legal, DeafBlind, ProTactile, or foreign sign language experience.
• Operational knowledge of CART and real-time captioning, applicable NCRA credentials, captioning technology, transcripts, audiovisual systems, platforms, and accessible events.
• Bachelor's or master's degree in interpreting, Deaf studies, accessibility, linguistics, business, operations, healthcare administration, or a related field; equivalent experience will be considered.
• Experience with Salesforce or similar CRM, scheduling systems, DHHIS, ProviderOne, VRI platforms, reporting tools, Lean / Six Sigma, or project management.

Compensation and Benefits

• Base Salary: $100,000 annually
• Incentive: Annual performance-based bonus
• Commission: Up to 5%
• Eligibility for the Company's full-time health, welfare, retirement, paid time off, paid sick leave, holiday, and other benefit programs, subject to plan terms and Company policy.
• Up to $1,000 annually for approved professional development, certification renewal, CEUs, membership, or conference costs.
• Formal reviews at approximately 90 days, six months, and twelve months; future Director consideration may be discussed based on sustained results and business need. No promotion is guaranteed.

Universal Language Service, Inc.