Technical Program Manager, AI Delivery for Public Sector & Defence, Canada

About the job

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.
• 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 skills.
• Experience working with government, defence, or heavily regulated customers.
• Proven track record managing complex, multi-stakeholder technical programs with stringent compliance requirements.
• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field; advanced degree or technical certifications are 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.
• 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, 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).