Technical Program Manager, AI Delivery for Public Sector & Defence

About the Role

We're seeking an experienced Engineering Program Manager to join Cohere's customer-facing Engineering Program Management team, with a focus on public sector and defence accounts. This is a highly specialized role requiring an individual who understands both the technical complexity of frontier AI models and the unique requirements of government and defence organizations. You will be the critical bridge between our cutting-edge AI capabilities and the specific needs of ministerial departments, public bodies, agencies, Crown corporations, and defence organizations. You'll navigate complex procurement processes, stringent security requirements, data sovereignty concerns, and regulatory compliance while ensuring our customers successfully deploy and scale our AI solutions. In this role, you'll collaborate with our Strategic Customer team, Applied ML (AML), Engineering, Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE), Platform, Product, and Go-to-Market teams, serving as the technical program lead and trusted advisor for our most sensitive and high-impact government engagements. 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 like content generation, semantic search, RAG, and agents. We believe that our work is instrumental to the widespread adoption of AI. 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. We like to work hard and move fast to do what’s best for our customers. Cohere is a team of researchers, engineers, designers, and more, who are passionate about their craft. Each person is one of the best in the world at what they do. We believe that a diverse range of perspectives is a requirement for building great products.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end technical program delivery for 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
• 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
• 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 UK and EMEA government deployments: privacy compliance (including UK GDPR/DPA), technical risk impact assessments (including Algorithmic Impact Assessments), governance processes (including Treasury Board submissions), security authorisations, and sovereign AI requirements
• Drive alignment between product development priorities and specific government requirements
• 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

Requirements

• 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
• Strong understanding of enterprise software deployment architectures (cloud, on-premises, hybrid, air-gapped)
• Strong understanding and 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
• Deep understanding of how government organizations procure, evaluate, and deploy technology
• Familiarity with German government requirements: data sovereignty, privacy laws (Privacy Act), accessibility standards, official languages obligations, security classifications
• Understanding of defence and national security considerations in AI deployment
• Eligible to obtain German government security clearance (Top Secret preferred)

Qualifications

• Active German government security clearance (Secret or Top Secret) - strong preference for active Top Secret clearance
• Bilingual (German/English) proficiency
• Background in or strong familiarity with German defence, intelligence, or critical infrastructure sectors
• Experience with GC Cloud services (Azure, AWS GovCloud) or Protected B/C environments
• Project management certification (PMP, PgMP) or government-specific methodologies
• Experience with technical risk impact assessments (such as Algorithmic Impact Assessments) or AI ethics frameworks is a strong asset