Contract Manager, Language Access Services

Universal Language Service, Inc. Bellevue, WA (On-Site) | Full-Time | Exempt

About the Role

Universal Language Service, Inc. provides spoken and sign language interpreting services to public agencies and healthcare organizations across Washington State. We're hiring a Contract Manager, Language Access Services to serve as the accountable owner of our public-sector contract portfolio.

This is the senior contract-facing role in our organization. You will hold prime responsibility for service delivery under each contract, act as the principal point of contact for agency contract and program managers, and own the compliance posture that determines whether we retain our contracts, earn performance-based extensions, and pass audit without findings.

Our contracts are deliverable-heavy and metrics-driven. They specify fill rates, answer speeds, connection times, platform uptime, credential standards, and reporting deadlines down to the calendar day - with real consequences for missing them, including withheld payments, corrective action plans, liquidated damages, and termination. This role exists to make sure that doesn't happen.

If you have run a complex government services contract and know what it feels like when a reporting deadline slips or a corrective action letter arrives, this role will be familiar territory.

Schedule & Location

This position works on-site at our Bellevue corporate office, Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM Pacific Time. This is not a remote or hybrid role.

Because our services operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, this position also carries on-call responsibility outside scheduled hours - including evenings, weekends, and holidays - for service disruptions, system outages, emergency and critical requests, escalations, and time-sensitive agency deadlines. Periodic statewide travel is required for agency meetings, training, outreach, and community engagement.

What You'll Own

Contract Compliance & Agency Relationship

• Serve as the designated contract manager and principal point of contact for all business, performance, and administrative matters under each contract.
• Maintain a complete obligation register capturing every deliverable, performance threshold, notice requirement, approval gate, and deadline across the portfolio - with owners and systems of record assigned.
• Read, interpret, and operationalize contract and statement-of-work language; translate new or amended requirements into concrete process, system, and staffing changes.
• Lead recurring contract compliance meetings: solicit agenda items in advance, distribute agendas, present KPI summaries and trend analysis, and issue minutes with takeaways and action items within required timeframes.
• Negotiate amendments, change requests, scope modifications, and service enhancements with agency counterparts; assess cost and delivery impact before committing.
• Manage corrective action plans, performance improvement plans, cure notices, and root-cause analyses; close findings within required windows and document remediation.
• Obtain required agency approvals before implementing changes to policies, procedures, standard operating procedures, systems, training materials, public-facing content, or anything affecting requesters or interpreters.
• Prepare for and support agency and third-party audits and monitoring reviews; produce records, documentation, and system access on request; conduct internal self-audits and self-report issues.

Labor Agreement Administration

• Serve as the operational authority on the applicable collective bargaining agreement covering language access providers, and implement all successor-agreement changes accurately and on time, including scheduled rate changes.
• Ensure systems and processes comply with required documentation standards at each stage of an assignment, payment timelines and modality-specific minimums, notification windows for modifications and cancellations, interpreter review and dispute deadlines with advance notice, deduction and remittance obligations on fixed calendar dates, overpayment recovery procedures, and prohibitions on punitive fines or fees.
• Ensure required postings, annual distributions, and reference materials are current and accessible.
• Maintain organizational neutrality on union membership and representation; route such inquiries appropriately.
• Identify provisions requiring clarification or amendment and escalate to leadership and the agency. This role does not participate in collective bargaining.

Performance Oversight

• Hold functional managers accountable for contractual key performance indicators, including appointment fill and success rates, unfilled rates, call answer speed, interpreter connection times, request acknowledgement and booking turnaround, emergency and critical response times, platform availability and downtime limits, and reporting timeliness.
• Establish and enforce internal escalation thresholds so performance drift is detected and remediated before it becomes an agency-visible deficiency.
• Review dashboards and performance data on a defined cadence; require written explanation and remedy for any metric trending toward its contractual limit.
• Track eligibility for performance-based contract extensions and drive attainment of the underlying criteria - typically timely reporting, timely fee remittance, and sustained performance.
• Monitor high-risk patterns such as repeat unfilled languages, interpreter no-shows, and recurring technical failures, and intervene before they trigger contractual termination provisions.

Reporting & Deliverables

• Own the full reporting calendar - monthly, quarterly, annual, fixed-calendar-date, and ad-hoc - and guarantee on-time, complete, accurate submission of every deliverable.
• Confirm every recurring report has a named owner, source data, template, and submission path; no deliverable may depend on an individual's memory.
• Review and approve reports before release; verify required data elements, formats, narrative trend and gap analysis, and visualizations are present.
• Where required data is unavailable through no fault of the organization, provide advance written notice identifying the affected report, missing data, cause, expected availability, and resubmission date.
• Respond to public records requests, union information requests, and agency ad-hoc data requests within required turnaround times; negotiate timelines in writing when system development or querying is required.

Governance & Risk Management

• Own contract-related risk across privacy and security incidents, accessibility grievances, billing and claims exposure, credential integrity, service disruptions, and business continuity.
• Ensure business associate agreements, data-sharing terms, insurance certificates and endorsements, licensing, registrations, and required certifications are current, on file, and submitted on schedule.
• Ensure privacy incidents, accessibility grievances, and regulatory inquiries are reported to designated agency contacts within required timeframes and that recurring compliance reports are submitted.
• Maintain the staffing list and organizational chart in agency-required format - names, titles, and supervisory relationships - producible immediately on request.
• Ensure segregation-of-duties controls remain intact: scheduling separated from interpreter discipline, billing separated from bill audit, credentialing separated from assignment offering, and complaint resolution independent of the operations it reviews.
• Ensure the organization never reassigns agency-authorized requests to private-pay status and never bills more than one party for the same service.

Implementation & Transition

• Lead contract implementations and phased service ramp-ups: work plans, implementation plans, timelines, gap analysis, and testing coordination across functional, end-to-end, user acceptance, billing, compatibility, performance, security, and disaster recovery testing.
• Support usability studies and ensure resulting system changes are implemented within required timeframes.
• Provide required progress and data reporting throughout transition and implementation periods.
• Support orderly transition assistance at contract expiration or termination to minimize service disruption.

Leadership

• Provide direction, priorities, and accountability to functional managers covering service delivery and interpreter network, compliance and quality, billing and revenue cycle, systems and reporting, and training and outreach.
• Ensure cross-training and documented procedures so no single point of failure exists in credentialing, scheduling, billing, reporting, or compliance.
• Model and enforce ethical business practice, procurement integrity, conflict-of-interest avoidance, prohibitions on anticompetitive conduct, and restrictions requiring agency approval before publicity or promotional use of agency names.
• Escalate contractual, legal, financial, privacy, and safety matters to executive leadership with clear recommendations.

What We're Looking For

Required

• Bachelor's degree in business, public administration, healthcare administration, or a related field - or equivalent combination of education and directly relevant experience.
• 2+ years managing government, healthcare, or other regulated-industry service contracts, including deliverable management and compliance reporting.
• 3+ years leading managers or senior individual contributors.
• Demonstrated ownership of contractual performance metrics with documented improvement results.
• Experience responding to corrective action, audit findings, or compliance escalations.
• Strong contract-reading ability: you can take a statement of work and produce an accurate obligation register from it.
• Exceptional written communication - you will author narrative reports, corrective action plans, policies, and formal agency correspondence.
• Data fluency: dashboards, advanced spreadsheets, and the ability to translate metrics into corrective action. Business intelligence tools a plus.
• Proven ability to manage competing obligations across multiple contracts, agencies, and deadlines without allowing deliverables to lapse.
• Sound judgment in ambiguous, time-sensitive situations, including matters involving privacy, safety, or agency escalation.
• Ability to work on-site in Bellevue, Monday-Friday, 8:00 AM-5:00 PM PT, and to be available on-call outside those hours.
• Must pass a criminal background check at hire and annually thereafter.
• Work must be performed within the contiguous United States.

Preferred

• Direct experience with public-sector language access, interpreting, or healthcare access services.
• Familiarity with collective bargaining agreements affecting independent contractors.
• Working knowledge of HIPAA, ADA, and digital accessibility standards.
• Experience with claims submission, denial management, or public-program eligibility rules.
• Experience leading contract implementations, system migrations, or phased service transitions.
• Bilingual proficiency, ASL proficiency, or interpreting/translation credentials.

How Success Is Measured

1. On-time, complete, accurate submission of every recurring and ad-hoc deliverable
2. Attainment of all contractual performance thresholds
3. Zero withheld payments, liquidated damages, or escalated corrective actions attributable to management failure
4. Clean audit and monitoring outcomes with no material findings
5. Achievement of performance-based contract extension criteria
6. Labor agreement compliance - no grievances or findings arising from noncompliance
7. Timely internal escalation - no deficiency reaching agency notice without prior internal escalation
8. Agency satisfaction and constructive working relationships with program and contract managers

Compensation

Salary: $90,000 - $110,000 per year, depending on experience and qualifications

Additional Compensation: Performance-based bonus eligibility

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Employer-paid life insurance and AD&D
• Short-term and long-term disability coverage
• 401(k) retirement plan
• Paid time off (vacation and sick leave, accrued)
• Paid holidays
• Paid parental leave
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• Health Savings Account (HSA) or Flexible Spending Account (FSA) options
• Professional development and continuing education support
• Professional membership and certification reimbursement
• Mileage and travel reimbursement
• Cell phone or communications stipend for on-call responsibilities

Pay Range: $90,000 - $110,000 per year