Localization Specialist

Salmon is a technology-driven financial company building a banking and lending platform across Southeast Asia, starting in the Philippines.

We combine global fintech expertise with deep local market knowledge to make financial services simple, accessible, and useful for millions of people across the region.

7M+ app downloads. 2M+ monthly active users. 10,000+ partner stores. US$310M+ raised from leading global investors.

Manila-based, globally distributed, and hybrid-first — our team spans 45+ countries.

If you want to solve complex problems at scale and impact how millions of people access and manage money, come build with us.

Southeast Asia's fintech moment starts here.

About the role
Salmon’s content — marketing, product, and support — is written in English first. Tagalog and Cebuano (Bisaya) versions still depend on ad hoc help. You’d own that layer end-to-end and become our go-to expert on how Salmon sounds in both languages
This is a senior role, not a file-in, file-out translation job. You set the quality bar, build the glossaries and style guides for Tagalog and Cebuano from scratch, and make the calls yourself rather than follow someone else’s rulebook. Done well, this could grow into its own small localization function
What you’ll do

• Write and localize marketing, website, product, and in-app copy in Tagalog and Cebuano. You decide when to translate, when to rewrite from scratch, and what stays in English. Cebuano work will grow as the product expands into new regions, but native-level fluency is required from day one

• Build the style guides and glossaries for both languages: voice and register, financial terminology, formatting, and how to handle regional variation. Keep them current as the product grows

• Adapt tone for regional audiences and advise teams early: flag campaign concepts, humor, or messaging that may not land before production starts

• Handle financial content with precision: explain fees, interest, and repayment terms clearly without changing their meaning, and know when to take wording to Legal or Compliance

• Review copy before publication, including as backup reviewer for other authors. Check it in the actual app or customer journey, and decide what must be fixed: an error that could mislead a customer versus a stylistic preference

• Work with Marketing, Content, and Product: take briefs, challenge unclear briefs and English source copy, suggest alternatives, work through conflicting feedback, and deliver on schedule

• Spot recurring language problems across teams and fix them at the source, through guidelines and training, instead of correcting the same issues again

What you’ll own

• The quality bar for all Tagalog and Cebuano content, including improving what’s already published

• The glossaries and style guides, from first draft to adoption across teams, aligned with brand voice

• Final approval of Tagalog and Cebuano content: you approve it or send it back for revision

• The team’s go-to expertise on regional-audience nuance

What makes you a strong fit

• Native or near-native fluency in Tagalog and Cebuano (Bisaya). You write in both, not only translate

• Strong English: you read our briefs and spot what won’t work in Filipino

• 5+ years of professional writing, editing, or localization in Tagalog or Cebuano for commercial clients, or an equivalent track record, including full ownership of a localization workflow from intake and translation through review, release, and quality control

• Published work you can walk us through: what you decided and why

• Experience building glossaries, style guides, or tone-of-voice guidelines from scratch

• Strong editorial judgment: you evaluate quality, decide on your own, give authors clear feedback, and defend your decisions to stakeholders

• Understanding of how Filipinos use financial products and apps. We value product intuition as much as language skill

• Experience with localization/TMS tools (Lokalise, Phrase, Smartling, Crowdin) and Figma is a plus