Description
Cohere is seeking an experienced Technical Program Manager to join its customer-facing Program Management team, focusing on public sector and defence accounts in Europe, particularly in Germany.
The successful candidate will serve as a critical bridge between Cohere's cutting-edge AI capabilities and the specific needs of Ministries, Agencies, and defence organisations across Europe. They will navigate complex procurement processes, stringent security requirements, data sovereignty concerns, and regulatory compliance while ensuring customers successfully deploy and scale AI solutions.
Key responsibilities include:
- Leading end-to-end technical program delivery for Germany and broader European public sector and defence customers
- Serving as the primary technical program point of contact for customers
- Translating complex public sector and defence requirements into actionable engineering plans
- Navigating complex procurement processes and contractual technical obligations
- Providing clear, timely, and objective communication across Cohere's engineering organisation and customer stakeholders
- Creating and managing project schedules that account for public sector and defence timelines, security review processes, and approval cycles
- Identifying and managing dependencies across government departments, security authorities, cloud service providers, and internal Cohere teams
- Ensuring on-time delivery of AI solutions that meet security, privacy, accessibility, and performance standards
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
- Experience working with government, defence, or heavily regulated customers
- Proven track record managing complex, multi-stakeholder technical programs with stringent compliance requirements
- Strong understanding of enterprise software deployment architectures
- Working knowledge of or experience with modern AI, such as LLMs, agentic systems, MCP, RAG, fine-tuning, evals, and responsible AI
- Deep understanding of how government and defence organisations procure, evaluate, and deploy technology
- Familiarity with European government requirements, including data sovereignty, privacy laws, accessibility standards, official languages obligations, and security classifications
Nice to have:
- Active German security clearance
- Bilingual (English/German) proficiency
- Background in or strong familiarity with European defence, intelligence, or critical infrastructure sectors
- Experience with GC Cloud services or Protected B/C environments
- Project management certification or government-specific methodologies
Cohere offers a range of benefits, including:
- A weekly lunch stipend of $75 or equivalent in local currency
- Full health and dental benefits
- RRSP matching, 401K, or Pension Scheme
- 100% Parental Leave top-up for up to 6 months
- Annual enrichment benefits for arts & culture, fitness/wellness, quality time, and workspace improvement
- Education & learning stipend for conferences, courses, and coaching
- 6 weeks of paid vacation
- Budget for traveling to other offices and an annual company offsite
- $500 home office stipend