Technical Program Manager, AI Delivery for Public Sector & Defense

Leads end-to-end delivery of frontier AI programs for French and European government and defense customers, coordinating engineering teams, security, compliance, procurement, and deployment. Requires 6+ years of customer-facing technical program management experience, French citizenship, French fluency, and eligibility for government clearance.

About the job

Responsibilities

Customer Program Leadership

Own end-to-end technical program delivery for French and broader European public sector and defense customers, from initial deployment through production scaling.
Serve as the primary technical program point of contact for customers and build trusted relationships with departmental CIOs, IT directors, and technical teams.
Translate public sector and defense requirements—including security, compliance, accessibility, bilingualism, and data sovereignty—into actionable engineering plans.
Navigate complex procurement processes, RFP responses, and contractual technical obligations.

Strategic Communication

Provide clear, timely, and objective communication across engineering, customer, public sector, and defense stakeholders.
Translate AI/ML technical concepts into language appropriate for government decision-makers.
Present technical roadmaps and status updates to senior stakeholders and departmental executives.
Represent technical capabilities in sensitive government and defense contexts.

Complex Program Management

Create and manage schedules accounting for public sector and defense timelines, security reviews, and approval cycles.
Identify and manage dependencies across government departments, security authorities, cloud service providers, and internal teams.
Manage privacy, security, political, regulatory, technology, and infrastructure risks.
Align product development priorities with customer requirements.

Technical Delivery & Execution

Ensure on-time delivery of AI solutions meeting security, privacy, accessibility, and performance standards.
Coordinate technical work across model customization, security hardening, government-system integration, and bilingual-support teams.
Establish governance checkpoints for high-stakes government and defense deployments.
Solve technical challenges in air-gapped, on-premises, and 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, defense, 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.
Understanding of government and defense procurement, evaluation, and technology deployment.
Familiarity with European government requirements, data sovereignty, privacy laws, accessibility standards, official-language obligations, and security classifications.
Understanding of defense and national-security considerations in AI deployment.
Eligibility to obtain French government security clearance; French citizenship is required.
Based in France and fluent in French.

Nice to Have

Active French Secret or Top Secret security clearance.
Bilingual English/French proficiency.
Background in or familiarity with European defense, 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.
Experience with Algorithmic Impact Assessments or AI ethics frameworks.
Advanced degree or technical certifications.

Compensation & Benefits

Weekly lunch stipend of $75/£75 or equivalent in local currency.
Full health and dental benefits, including a separate mental-health budget.
RRSP matching, 401(k), or pension scheme.
Up to six months of 100% parental-leave top-up for either parent.
Annual enrichment benefits for arts and culture, fitness and wellness, quality time, and workspace improvements.
Education and learning stipend for conferences, courses, and coaching.
Six weeks of paid vacation (30 working days).
Travel budget for visiting other offices if remote, plus an annual company offsite.

Skills

AI/ML, LLMs, Agentic Systems, Mcp, RAG, Fine-Tuning, MLOps, API Integrations, Model Inference, Data Pipelines, Azure, Aws Govcloud, PMP, Pgmp, Responsible Ai