Technical Program Manager, AI Delivery for Public Sector & Defence

Cohere Inc.

Job Overview

Location

Ottawa

Job Type

Full-time

Full Job Description

📋 Description

• 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—including security, compliance, accessibility, bilingualism, and data sovereignty—into actionable engineering plans.
• Navigate government procurement processes, RFP responses, and contractual technical obligations specific to Canadian federal departments, provincial agencies, and Crown corporations.
• Provide clear, timely, and objective communication between Cohere’s engineering teams, customer stakeholders, and senior government leadership.
• Translate AI/ML technical concepts (LLMs, RAG, fine-tuning, model inference, data pipelines) into government-appropriate language for non-technical decision-makers.
• Present technical roadmaps and status updates to senior government officials and departmental executives in sensitive defence and national security contexts.
• Create and manage project schedules accounting for government timelines, security review cycles, and ministerial approval processes.
• Identify and manage dependencies across government departments, security authorities, cloud service providers, and internal Cohere teams (Strategic Customer, AML Engineering, FDE, Platform, Product, Go-to-Market).
• Navigate risks unique to government deployments: Privacy Act compliance, Algorithmic Impact Assessments, Treasury Board submissions, and security authorizations.
• Ensure on-time delivery of AI solutions meeting government-grade security, privacy, accessibility, and performance standards.
• Coordinate technical work across multiple domains: model customization, security hardening, integration with government systems, and 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.
• Work closely with Applied ML Engineering, Forward Deployed Engineering, and Platform teams to align product development priorities with specific government requirements.
• Represent Cohere’s technical capabilities in sensitive government and defence engagements while maintaining strict adherence to security protocols.
• Support the deployment of AI solutions in Protected B/C environments or with GC Cloud services (Azure, AWS GovCloud) where applicable.
• Act as a trusted advisor for Canadian federal and provincial government clients on responsible AI adoption, ethics frameworks, and technical accountability.

🎯 Requirements

• 6+ years of experience as a customer-facing Technical or Engineering Program Manager in AI/ML consulting, technology transformation, or enterprise software delivery.
• 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.
• Strong understanding of enterprise software deployment architectures (cloud, on-premises, hybrid, air-gapped).
• Deep understanding of Canadian government requirements: data sovereignty, Privacy Act, accessibility standards, official languages obligations, security classifications.
• Eligible to obtain Canadian government security clearance (Top Secret preferred).

🏖️ Benefits

• Remote-friendly work environment with offices in Toronto, San Francisco, New York City, London, Paris, Montreal, and more.
• Daily lunch program and snacks for in-office employees.
• Regular community and social events for office-based teams.
• Co-working benefit for employees not near an office.

Skills & Technologies

TypeScript

AWS

Azure

Remote

Degree Required

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Cohere Inc.

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About Cohere Inc.

Cohere provides large language models and retrieval-augmented generation APIs for enterprise developers to embed conversational AI, search, summarization, and content generation into applications. Founded in 2021 by former Google Brain researchers, the company offers cloud and on-premise deployment, fine-tuning tools, and multilingual support to help organizations automate workflows, improve customer support, and analyze unstructured data while maintaining data privacy and security controls.

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