Technical Program Manager, AI Delivery for Public Sector & Defence, UK
$12k - $18k • Remote • London • FullTime
Posted 9d ago
About the job
Cohere is seeking an experienced Program Manager to join our customer-facing Program Management team, focusing on UK public sector and defence accounts. This role requires a deep understanding of technical program delivery, the complexities of frontier AI models, and the unique needs of government and defence organizations. You will act as the crucial link between Cohere's advanced AI capabilities and the specific requirements of UK Government and defence clients, navigating intricate procurement processes, stringent security demands, data sovereignty concerns, and regulatory compliance to ensure successful deployment and scaling of our AI solutions. You will collaborate with various internal teams, serving as the technical program lead and trusted advisor for our most sensitive and high-impact government engagements.
Responsibilities
- Own end-to-end technical program delivery for UK 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, security authorisations, technical and infrastructure constraints.
- 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 customisation, 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 UK 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 UK government security clearance (Top Secret preferred).