Technical Project Manager – AI Agents & Automation

Join America’s favorite family bakery since 1934—home of Little Debbie®, Drake’s® Cakes, and Sunbelt Bakery® Granola Bars. Work with legacy brands that bring smiles to faces nationwide, including yours. You’ll experience a culture committed to work-life balance, guaranteed time off, and supportive health and wellness offerings. Enjoy profit sharing, long-term job security, and a range of exciting career paths. When you join McKee Foods, you’ll discover a better way to live and work.

Salaried grade 9, 11 or 12
$85,400 - $123,600 / year, depending on experience and qualifications.
Actual salaries may vary and in some cases may be higher with extensive experience and strong performance.

Exempt

1st Shift (Monday – Friday, 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.), other hours as needed
Hybrid with minimum three days on-site per week

10260 McKee Road, Collegedale TN 37315

McKee Foods is seeking a Project Manager to join our Agile Information Services team. Sitting within the IT organization and reporting to IT Project Management, the Technical Project Manager will lead a strategic portfolio of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation initiatives. You will partner closely with our internal IT development team to drive cutting‑edge agentic AI use cases, while also providing oversight and delivery management for external consultants specializing in automation.

We are looking for an exceptional, adaptable leader with a solid technical foundation, strong financial acumen, and a tremendous ability to learn, grow, and adapt in a rapidly changing technology landscape. You must be driven by continuous value delivery. A critical mandate of this role is value realization: you will track project costs, measure performance, and ensure a transparent, consistent Return on Investment (ROI) across the entire automation and AI portfolio.

• Includes the end‑to‑end Agile delivery of a designated portfolio of AI and automation projects, providing regular reporting on progress, risks, ROI, and milestones to the IT Leadership Team
• Partner seamlessly with the internal IT development team to scope, build, and deploy agentic AI and cognitive workflows
• Manage the project deliverables of external automation consultants, ensuring their work aligns with IT standards, architectural guidelines, and business timelines
• Act as a catalyst for innovation, continuously learning and adapting to rapidly evolving AI trends to identify new, value‑driving use cases

• Design and execute a practical value realization framework to measure the business impact of all AI and automation deployments
• Maintain solid financial tracking mechanisms to accurately monitor project costs, including infrastructure, licensing, vendor billable hours, and internal IT resource allocation
• Perform solid financial analysis to calculate and present ROI to executive leadership, ensuring all initiatives consistently deliver tangible business value
• Transition successful deployments from project phases into measured, value‑generating operational assets

• Apply a deep understanding of Agile/Scrum principles to manage highly iterative AI development and structured automation deployments
• Act as the strategic liaison between business stakeholders, external vendor consultants, and internal IT engineering functions
• Maintain rigorous documentation and reporting standards to support data analytics and continuous improvement initiatives

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Business Analytics or related field
• 3 years in Technical Project Management, with a proven track record of successfully leading software development, IT, or AI‑focused initiatives using Agile or similar methodologies
• A tremendous ability to learn, grow, and adapt to new technologies (e.g., GenAI, LLMs, agentic frameworks) while maintaining a relentless focus on delivering business value
• Strong capability in financial tracking, cost management, and ROI calculation
• A balance of technical literacy and business strategy is required
• Experience partnering cross‑functionally with internal IT development teams…