Technical Program Manager, AI Delivery Public Sector & Defence , East Coast

Engineering Program Manager, Public Sector & Defence

Join Cohere as an Engineering Program Manager focused on Canadian public sector and defence accounts.

Our mission is to scale intelligence to serve humanity. We’re training and deploying frontier models for developers and enterprises who are building AI systems to power magical experiences such as content generation, semantic search, RAG, and agents.

We’re seeking an experienced Engineering Program Manager to join our customer‑facing Engineering Program Management team, focusing on Canadian public sector and defence accounts. You will bridge our frontier AI capabilities with the needs of federal departments, provincial agencies, Crown corporations, and defence organizations.

Ottawa or Toronto required (proximity to government customers).

Active Top Secret clearance strongly preferred. Eligibility and willingness to obtain clearance also considered.

Customer Program Leadership

• 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

Strategic Communication

• 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

Complex Program Management

• 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

Technical Delivery & Execution

• 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

Required Experience

• 7+ years of experience as an Engineering or Technical Program Manager
• At least 2 years in customer‑facing technical delivery and operations for enterprise‑grade software or AI/ML solutions
• 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

Technical Background

• Strong understanding of enterprise software deployment architectures (cloud, on‑premises, hybrid, air‑gapped)
• Knowledge of or experience with LLM training, fine‑tuning, or deployment would be a strong differentiator
• Comfortable discussing API integrations, model inference, data pipelines, and ML operations with technical stakeholders

Government & Defence Acumen

• 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 language obligations, security…