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Technical Program Manager, AI Delivery – Public Sector & Defence

at Cohere

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Posted 2 months ago

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About the role

  • Program Manager responsible for AI deployment in Canadian public sector and defence sectors. Delivering technical programs while ensuring compliance and collaboration with government entities.

Responsibilities

  • Own end-to-end technical program delivery for Canadian public sector and defence customers, from initial deployment through production scaling
  • Serve as the primary technical program point of contact for government customers, building trusted relationships with departmental CIOs, IT directors, and technical teams
  • Translate complex government requirements (security, compliance, accessibility, bilingualism, data sovereignty) into actionable engineering plans
  • Navigate government procurement processes, RFP responses, and contractual technical obligations.
  • Provide clear, timely, and objective communication across Cohere's engineering organization, customer stakeholders, and government leadership
  • Translate between AI/ML technical concepts and government-appropriate language for decision-makers who may not have deep technical backgrounds
  • Present technical roadmaps and status updates to senior government officials and departmental executives
  • Represent Cohere's technical capabilities in sensitive government and defence contexts.
  • Create and manage project schedules that account for government timelines, security review processes, and ministerial approval cycles
  • Identify and manage dependencies across government departments, security authorities, cloud service providers, and internal Cohere teams
  • Navigate risks unique to government deployments: privacy compliance, Algorithmic Impact Assessments, Treasury Board submissions, security authorizations
  • Drive alignment between product development priorities and specific government requirements.
  • Ensure on-time delivery of AI solutions that meet government-grade security, privacy, accessibility, and performance standards
  • Coordinate technical work across multiple teams: model customization, security hardening, integration with government systems, bilingual support
  • Establish governance checkpoints appropriate for high-stakes government deployments
  • Problem-solve complex technical challenges in air-gapped, on-premises, or highly regulated environments.

Requirements

  • 6+ years of experience as a customer-facing Technical or Engineering Program Manager in AI/ML consulting, technology transformation, or enterprise software delivery.
  • Excellent executive communication and stakeholder management.
  • Experience working with government, defence, or heavily regulated customers (public sector, defence contractors).
  • Proven track record managing complex, multi-stakeholder technical programs with stringent compliance requirements.
  • Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field; advanced degree or technical certs a plus.
  • Strong understanding of enterprise software deployment architectures (cloud, on-premises, hybrid, air-gapped).
  • Working knowledge of or experience with modern AI: LLMs, agentic systems, MCP, RAG, fine-tuning, evals, and responsible AI would be a strong differentiator.
  • Comfortable discussing API integrations, model inference, data pipelines, and ML operations with technical stakeholders.
  • Deep understanding of how government organizations procure, evaluate, and deploy technology.
  • Familiarity with Canadian government requirements: data sovereignty, privacy laws (Privacy Act), accessibility standards, official languages obligations, security classifications.
  • Understanding of defence and national security considerations in AI deployment.
  • Experience with Algorithmic Impact Assessments or AI ethics frameworks is a strong asset.
  • Eligible to obtain Canadian government security clearance (Top Secret preferred).

Benefits

  • Daily lunch program
  • Plenty of snacks
  • Regular community and social events
  • Co-working benefit for remote workers

Job title

Technical Program Manager

Job type

Full Time

Experience level

Mid levelSenior

Salary

Not specified

Degree requirement

Bachelor's Degree

Tech skills

Cloud

Location requirements

HybridOttawaCanada

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