Technical Program Manager, AI Delivery for Public Sector & Defense, Germany

Description

The company builds foundation AI models and end-to-end products for enterprises, with security as a core focus and a goal of solving practical business problems.

It trains and deploys frontier models for businesses building their own AI systems. Its researchers, engineers and designers work as one team.

This role sits in the customer-facing Program Management team and covers public sector and defence accounts in Europe, mainly Germany.

You will act as technical lead and trusted adviser on sensitive, high-impact government and defence projects, linking the company's AI work to the needs of ministries, agencies and defence bodies.

You will work with the Strategic Customer team, Applied ML Engineering, Forward Deployed Engineering, Platform, Product and Go-to-Market teams.

Responsibilities

• Own technical delivery from first deployment through to production scale for German and wider European public sector and defence customers.
• Be the main technical contact for customers, building trust with departmental CIOs, IT directors and technical staff.
• Turn public sector and defence requirements on security, compliance, accessibility, bilingual use and data sovereignty into concrete engineering plans.
• Manage procurement steps, RFP responses and technical contractual obligations.
• Explain AI and ML concepts in plain government language to decision-makers without deep technical backgrounds.
• Give senior stakeholders, including departmental executives, clear, timely and objective updates, and present technical roadmaps.
• Represent the company's technical capabilities in sensitive government and defence settings.
• Build schedules around public sector and defence timelines, security reviews and approval cycles.
• Track dependencies across government departments, security authorities, cloud providers and internal teams.
• Manage risks specific to government and defence work: privacy, security, political and regulatory, technology and infrastructure.
• Keep product priorities aligned with specific customer needs.
• Coordinate work across teams on model customisation, security hardening, government system integration and bilingual support.
• Set governance checkpoints suited to high-stakes deployments.
• Solve technical problems in air-gapped, on-premises and tightly regulated environments.
• Deliver AI solutions on time, meeting security, privacy, accessibility and performance standards.

Requirements

• 6+ years 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 with government, defence or heavily regulated customers.
• A proven record running complex, multi-stakeholder technical programs with strict compliance demands.
• A bachelor's degree in a relevant field. An advanced degree or technical certifications are a plus.
• Strong grasp of enterprise deployment architectures: cloud, on-premises, hybrid and air-gapped.
• Working knowledge of modern AI (LLMs, agentic systems, MCP, RAG, fine-tuning, evals and responsible AI) is a strong differentiator.
• Comfortable discussing API integrations, model inference, data pipelines and MLOps with technical stakeholders.
• Solid understanding of how government and defence bodies buy, assess and deploy technology.
• Familiarity with European government rules: data sovereignty, privacy law (Privacy Act), accessibility standards, official language obligations and security classifications.
• Understanding of defence and national security issues in AI deployment.
• Experience with Algorithmic Impact Assessments or AI ethics frameworks is a strong asset.
• Eligible to obtain a German security clearance.
• Active German security clearance.
• Background in or strong familiarity with European 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.
• Bilingual in English and German.

Conditions

You must be a German citizen living in Germany and fluent in German, so you can engage critical defence and national security customers straight away.

German security clearance is not required, but is a strong nice-to-have.

The company is remote-friendly and has offices in Toronto, London, New York City, San Francisco, Montreal, Paris, Berlin and Seoul, with more opening soon.

If you work remotely, a co-working benefit lets you work alongside others in your city.

AI-enabled tools may screen applications against the role criteria, but recruiters can still review any application.

The company welcomes applicants from all backgrounds and offers equal opportunities.

If your experience does not match every point above, you are still encouraged to apply.

Benefits

• Weekly lunch stipend of $75/£75 or equivalent in your local currency.
• Full health and dental cover, plus a separate mental health budget.
• RRSP matching, 401K and a pension scheme.
• 100% parental leave top-up for up to 6 months, for either parent.
• Annual enrichment benefits covering arts and culture, fitness and wellness, quality time and a workspace improvement credit.
• Education and learning stipend for conferences, courses and coaching.
• 6 weeks of paid vacation (30 working days).
• Travel budget to visit other offices if you work remotely, plus an annual company offsite.
• $500 home office stipend.
• For office staff: daily lunch programme, snacks and regular community and social events.