Staff Technical Program Manager, Machine Learning

About the Role

Cohere is the leading security-first enterprise AI company. We build cutting-edge foundation AI models and end-to-end products that are designed to solve real-world business problems. We’re training and deploying frontier models for enterprises who are building AI systems. We believe that our work is instrumental to the widespread adoption of AI and we are looking for folks that want to be part of that. We obsess over what we build. Each one of us is responsible for contributing to increasing the capabilities of our models and the value they drive for our customers. Cohere is a team of researchers, engineers, designers, and more, who are all passionate about their craft. We are a global technology company headquartered in Toronto with key offices in London, New York City, San Francisco, Montreal, Paris, Berlin and Seoul. Join us! As our Generative Machine Learning organization has continued growing, we are looking for more Technical Program Managers to join the team! At Cohere, TPMs are pivotal to our success, being seen as operational experts specializing in cross-functional efforts. Great TPMs at Cohere are well-rounded, executing with precision at the tactical level, while partnering with senior leaders and shaping the big picture at a strategic level, and the opportunities are endless in growing the scale and impact of their work. Cohere’s TPMs would often be described as organized, execution-oriented, pragmatic leaders who are adaptable to the needs of the company and the programs they lead. As a reward for the depth and breadth of expertize that you bring to the table, you will get to work alongside some of the most talented AI researchers and industry experts in the world on building cutting edge AI technology. No day will be the same as the one before, and the dynamic high growth environment will be absolutely perfect for anyone excited about solving novel problems, bringing structure to oftentimes chaotic and fast-paced environments, and ambitious about scaling their own impact and growth alongside the company! Please note: While we are remote-first and accept candidates from all over the world, we are highly prioritizing hiring for people who are within 1-2 hours of British Standard Time (BST).

Responsibilities

• Establish, improve, and scale foundational processes that allow the Generative Modeling teams to execute better, faster, and more predictably.
• Scale the operational capacity and effectiveness of the Modeling TPM team in collaboration with the Modeling TPM lead to ensure the function can remain lean and effective during a period of the program portfolio complexity and size continuing to rapidly increase.
• Flexibly adapt to the needs of the company, programs, and the team from tackling long-horizon programs that can span quarters or even years to jumping onto often highly ambiguous short-term challenges that can have company-wide impact.
• Partner directly with leaders within and outside of the Modeling organization on efforts to design, train and improve our core generative models.
• Lead cross-functional, oftentimes company-wide programs and strategic initiatives, collaborating and coordinating with cross-functional teams such as Product, Engineering, Legal, Platform, Infra, Policy, and Finance.
• Operate as an organizational expert in improving engineering execution rigor and operations on the ground, while contributing to the strategic layer in areas such as long-term strategic planning with senior modeling leadership.
• Map out dependencies and risks, and ensure that cross-functional execution across the program runs smoothly, communicating status with non-technical and technical stakeholders and senior management.
• Both own and enable a useful communication flow of priorities, ideas, and knowledge throughout and beyond the Modeling organization in line with your programs.
• Respond quickly to program-level changes, clarifying new scope, and managing resource needs in response to evolving priorities.

Requirements

• 5-10 years as a Technical Program Manager AND 5+ years of experience working directly on AI/ML.
• In-depth knowledge of machine learning, particularly when it comes to Natural Language Processing & Large Language Models (LLMs).
• Experience with working in a chaotic, fast paced, low structure environment. We need someone who is pragmatic, can roll up their sleeves when needed, and can function at the tactical and strategic level to do whatever it takes to make Cohere’s models succeed.
• Personal hands-on understanding of the unique challenges of managing projects and programs in the AI/ML development space as opposed to traditional software program management.
• Managed projects & programs requiring a strong general business acumen, such as coordinating with Finance on reporting needs or Policy on regulatory compliance matters — the broader your experience beyond ML technical program management, the better!

Qualifications

• Have technical experience in a hands-on capacity. We don’t necessarily need someone with hands on experience training models, but you need to feel comfortable sitting in the same rooms with some of the best researchers in the world, working on highly complex, cutting edge ML problems.
• Bonus points for experience with Multimodal AI.