Technical Program Manager, AI Delivery for Public Sector & Defence

Responsibilities

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.
• Translate government requirements, including security, compliance, accessibility, bilingualism, and data sovereignty, into actionable engineering plans.
• Navigate government procurement processes, RFP responses, and contractual technical obligations.

Strategic Communication

• Communicate clearly and objectively across engineering teams, customer stakeholders, and government leadership.
• Translate AI/ML technical concepts into language appropriate for government decision-makers.
• Present technical roadmaps and status updates to senior government officials and departmental executives.
• Represent technical capabilities in sensitive government and defence contexts.

Complex Program Management

• Create and manage project schedules accounting for government timelines, security reviews, and approval cycles.
• Identify and manage dependencies across government departments, security authorities, cloud service providers, and internal teams.
• Manage risks involving privacy compliance, Algorithmic Impact Assessments, Treasury Board submissions, and security authorizations.
• Drive alignment between product priorities and government requirements.

Technical Delivery & Execution

• Ensure timely delivery of AI solutions meeting government-grade security, privacy, accessibility, and performance standards.
• Coordinate model customization, security hardening, government-system integrations, and bilingual support.
• Establish governance checkpoints for high-stakes government deployments.
• Solve technical challenges in air-gapped, on-premises, or highly regulated environments.

Requirements

• 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 experience managing complex, multi-stakeholder technical programs with stringent compliance requirements.
• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field.
• Strong understanding of enterprise software deployment architectures, including cloud, on-premises, hybrid, and air-gapped environments.
• Working knowledge of modern AI, including LLMs, agentic systems, MCP, RAG, fine-tuning, evaluations, and responsible AI.
• Ability to discuss API integrations, model inference, data pipelines, and MLOps with technical stakeholders.
• Deep understanding of government technology procurement, evaluation, and deployment.
• Familiarity with Canadian requirements related to data sovereignty, privacy, accessibility, official languages, and security classifications.
• Understanding of defence and national security considerations in AI deployment.
• Experience with Algorithmic Impact Assessments or AI ethics frameworks is an asset.
• Eligible to obtain Canadian government security clearance; Top Secret is preferred.

Nice-to-Haves

• Active Canadian government Secret or Top Secret clearance.
• Bilingual English/French proficiency.
• Background in or familiarity with Canadian defence, intelligence, or critical infrastructure sectors.
• Experience with GC Cloud services, Azure, AWS GovCloud, or Protected B/C environments.
• PMP, PgMP, or government-specific project management certification or methodology experience.

Compensation & Benefits

• Compensation range for candidates in Canada: $160,000–$245,000 CAD.
• Weekly lunch stipend of $75 or equivalent in local currency.
• Full health and dental benefits, including a separate wellness budget.