Technical Program Manager, AI Delivery for Public Sector & Defence

Who are we?

Cohere is the leading security‑first enterprise AI company that builds cutting‑edge foundation AI models and end‑to‑end products designed to solve real‑world business problems. We train and deploy frontier models for enterprises building AI systems and work with government and defence organizations to adopt AI responsibly.

We are seeking an experienced Program Manager to join our customer‑facing Program Management team focused on Canadian public sector and defence accounts. This role bridges our AI capabilities with the needs of federal departments, agencies, Crown corporations, and defence organizations.

Ottawa (preferred) or Montreal or Toronto (required).

Active Top Secret clearance strongly preferred; candidates eligible to obtain clearance will also be considered.

• 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.
• Maintain clear, timely, and objective communication across Cohere’s engineering organization, customer stakeholders, and government leadership.
• Present technical roadmaps and status updates to senior government officials and departmental executives.
• Create and manage project schedules accounting 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.
• Identify and mitigate government‑specific risks such as privacy compliance, Algorithmic Impact Assessments, Treasury Board submissions, and security authorizations.
• Coordinate cross‑functional work on model customization, security hardening, integration with government systems, and bilingual support.
• Problem‑solve complex technical challenges in air‑gapped, on‑premises, or highly regulated environments.

• 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).
• Hands‑on knowledge or experience with modern AI concepts such as LLMs, agentic systems, RAG, fine‑tuning, evaluations, and responsible AI.
• Comfortable discussing API integrations, model inference, data pipelines, and ML operations with technical stakeholders.

• Deep understanding of how Canadian government organizations procure, evaluate, and deploy technology.
• Familiarity with Canadian government requirements: data sovereignty, privacy laws (Privacy Act), accessibility standards, official language obligations, and 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).

• Active Canadian government security clearance (Secret or Top Secret).
• Bilingual (English/French) proficiency.
• Background in or strong familiarity with Canadian defence, intelligence, or critical infrastructure sectors.
• Experience with GC Cloud services (Azure, AWS Gov Cloud) or Protected B/C environments.
• Project management certification (PMP, PgMP) or…