Technical Program Manager – AI Delivery for Public Sector & Defense

About the role

We are seeking an experienced Program Manager to join Cohere's customer‑facing Program Management team, focusing on public sector and defence accounts in Europe, particularly France. The role bridges cutting‑edge AI capabilities with ministries, agencies and defence organisations, navigating procurement, security and compliance.

Key responsibilities

• Own end‑to‑end technical program delivery for public sector and defence customers, from deployment to production scaling.
• Translate complex security, compliance and data‑sovereignty requirements into actionable engineering plans.
• Navigate procurement processes, RFP responses and contractual technical obligations.
• Coordinate technical work across model customisation, security hardening, integration with government systems and bilingual support.
• Manage project schedules, dependencies and risk mitigation specific to government and defence environments.

Required profile

• 6+ years of experience as a customer‑facing Technical or Engineering Program Manager in AI/ML, technology transformation or enterprise software delivery.
• Proven ability to communicate with senior executives and manage multi‑stakeholder programs with stringent compliance requirements.
• Experience working with government, defence or heavily regulated customers, and eligibility for French security clearance.
• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field; advanced degree or technical certifications are a plus.

Required skills

• Deep knowledge of LLMs, Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG), fine‑tuning and model inference.
• Experience with data pipelines, ML operations and API integrations.
• Understanding of enterprise deployment architectures: cloud, on‑premises, hybrid and air‑gapped environments.
• Familiarity with Azure, AWS GovCloud or other protected cloud services.
• Ability to implement security hardening, privacy compliance and accessibility standards.

What we offer

• Weekly lunch stipend of €75 (or equivalent in local currency).
• Full health, dental and mental‑health benefits.
• Retirement savings matching and pension scheme.
• 100 % parental‑leave top‑up for up to six months.
• Six weeks of paid vacation and a budget for travel to other offices.