Cohere

Technical Program Manager, Product Engineering

Cohere2 days ago
Location

United States

Type

Full Time

Salary

USD 180,000 – 240,000

Level

Lead

Role

Engineering Manager

Posted

May 14, 2026

Full TimeLead

The role

Summary

As Technical Program Manager for Product Engineering at Cohere, you will serve as the operating backbone for the company's expanding AI product portfolio, orchestrating release coordination, cross-functional dependencies, and operational processes across multiple workstreams. This high-visibility program architecture role requires deep expertise in program management, technical fluency with AI/LLM systems, and proven ability to drive velocity while maintaining quality in fast-moving startup environments. You'll own end-to-end release train management, stakeholder alignment, and process design while partnering with technical leadership to scale Cohere's platform capabilities.

What you'll do

Release Train Orchestration & Cadence Management: Own end-to-end release coordination for the North product portfolio, including designing and managing release trains, establishing release cadences, and ensuring smooth execution across all engineering and product teams. Define deployment windows, manage staging environments, and coordinate with infrastructure teams to minimize deployment risks while maximizing shipping velocity.
Cherry Pick & Hotfix Workflow Management: Drive approval workflows for cherry picks and hotfixes with appropriate triaging of urgency levels. Align stakeholders on criticality assessments, shepherd changes through deployment pipelines with proper guardrails and testing protocols, and maintain audit trails for compliance. Establish clear criteria for emergency deployments versus scheduled releases.
Customer-Facing Release Communications: Author and manage comprehensive release notes and customer-facing communications, translating technical implementation details into clear, accurate, and business-relevant updates for enterprise customers and internal stakeholders. Coordinate timing of announcements with GTM, sales, and customer success teams to maximize product launch impact.
Release Process Architecture & Scaling: Design and establish scalable release processes and operational frameworks that enable North's teams to ship faster with greater confidence as the platform grows. Build in quality gates, automated testing integration, and rollback procedures. Create documentation and runbooks that capture institutional knowledge and reduce onboarding time for new team members.
Cross-Team Dependency & Risk Mapping: Identify and map dependencies across engineering, product, infrastructure, and customer success teams within the release pipeline. Surface potential blockers and cascading risks early through dependency visualization and regular cadence reviews. Facilitate resolution coordination when conflicts arise between competing priorities or technical constraints.
Leadership Partnership & Operational Excellence: Partner directly with North leadership and Members of Technical Staff on initiatives to improve release quality, velocity, and operational rigor. Present metrics-driven analysis of release health, cycle time trends, and quality indicators. Drive continuous improvement based on post-mortems, team feedback, and industry best practices in AI product development.
Project Tracking & Cross-Functional Planning: Manage and optimize project tracking systems including Linear and GitHub workflows to maintain visibility across all workstreams. Facilitate release planning sessions, sprint planning ceremonies, and program review meetings. Establish single sources of truth for roadmaps, timelines, and deliverable status.
Program Agility & Scope Management: Respond quickly to program-level changes including market shifts, customer priority changes, and technical discoveries. Clarify scope adjustments, re-baseline timelines as needed, and marshal appropriate resources to maintain program momentum. Balance responsiveness to business needs with team capacity and quality standards.

What we look for

Technical

Large Language Model (LLM) Product DevelopmentDemonstrated fluency with LLM and AI/ML product development cycles, including understanding of model capabilities, inference optimization, fine-tuning pipelines, and prompt engineering. Ability to have technical conversations about model deployments, scaling considerations, and performance tradeoffs without requiring translation.
Release Management & CI/CD Pipeline ArchitectureStrong hands-on experience with modern release engineering practices including continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, infrastructure-as-code, automated testing frameworks, and deployment orchestration tools. Understanding of blue-green deployments, canary releases, and rollback procedures.
Project Management Tools & SystemsProficiency with Linear, GitHub workflows, and other project tracking systems. Ability to design workflows and automation within these tools to enforce release discipline and maintain transparency across distributed teams.
Metrics & Data-Driven Program ManagementAbility to establish and track key program metrics including release cycle time, defect escape rates, deployment frequency, and mean time to recovery (MTTR). Comfortable using data visualization and analytics to communicate program health to leadership.

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or Related FieldPreferred educational background in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, Operations Research, or related technical discipline. Equivalent professional experience in technical roles can substitute for formal degree requirements.

Experience

Engineering or Technical Program Manager (4+ years)Minimum 4+ years in Engineering Program Manager (EPM) or Technical Program Manager (TPM) roles with demonstrated track record managing complex, multi-team initiatives. At least some of this experience should be in startup or high-growth company environments where you built programs from scratch rather than inheriting established structures.
Multiple Simultaneous Workstream ManagementProven ability to manage multiple concurrent workstreams, hold complex interdependencies in context, identify cascading risks early, and maintain momentum across parallel programs. Examples of successfully juggling 3+ concurrent initiatives with different timelines and stakeholder groups.
Executive Communication & Stakeholder AlignmentTrack record of distilling complex, multi-team status into crisp, decision-ready summaries for C-level executives and boards. Demonstrated judgment about when to escalate versus resolve issues independently. Experience presenting to diverse audiences with varying technical backgrounds.
Cross-Functional Influence Without AuthorityExperience successfully aligning teams across Finance, Go-To-Market, Engineering, and Product where you lacked direct authority. Proven ability to build consensus, resolve conflicts diplomatically, and move organizations toward aligned goals despite competing departmental priorities.
Technical Leadership CredibilityDemonstrated experience working alongside and influencing Technical Leads, Architects, and Staff Engineers. Ability to understand and discuss technical dependencies, architectural tradeoffs, and engineering constraints without requiring detailed explanation.

Skills

Required skills

Program Architecture & DesignAbility to design program structures, governance models, and operational rhythms from scratch in ambiguous, low-structure environments. Comfortable creating processes rather than following established ones, with pragmatic mindset to ship imperfect solutions rather than wait for perfection.
Release Management & Deployment OrchestrationExpert-level knowledge of release trains, deployment pipelines, hotfix workflows, and rollback procedures. Ability to design and enforce release discipline while maintaining velocity and team morale in fast-moving environments.
Complex Dependency MappingSkilled at identifying, visualizing, and managing intricate dependencies across teams, systems, and workstreams. Proactive risk identification and escalation with concrete mitigation proposals.
Stakeholder Management & InfluenceExceptional ability to align diverse stakeholders with competing interests and priorities. Strong communication across all organizational levels from individual contributors to executive leadership with clear, contextual messaging.
AI/LLM Product KnowledgeWorking knowledge of large language model capabilities, limitations, deployment considerations, and product monetization models. Understanding of how inference, fine-tuning, and embeddings impact product roadmaps and release planning.
Process Design & OptimizationAbility to identify bottlenecks in existing processes and design scalable alternatives that maintain quality while improving velocity. Strong systems thinking and continuous improvement mindset.

Nice to have

OKR & Roadmapping Systems DesignExperience building OKR frameworks or roadmapping systems from scratch in scaling organizations. Demonstrated ability to align product, engineering, and business objectives through clear goal-setting and transparent execution.
LLM or AI Company ExperiencePrior experience in roles at AI-focused or LLM product companies such as Anthropic, OpenAI, Scale AI, Hugging Face, or similar organizations. Deep familiarity with AI product development cycles and infrastructure requirements.
Infrastructure & DevOps CollaborationStrong working relationships with infrastructure and DevOps teams. Experience coordinating complex deployments involving containerization, orchestration platforms like Kubernetes, or multi-region deployment considerations.
Quality Assurance & Testing StrategyExperience designing testing strategies, quality gates, and regression testing protocols for large-scale systems. Understanding of test automation frameworks and integration with CI/CD pipelines.
Customer Success AlignmentTrack record of proactively partnering with Customer Success and Support teams to understand customer impact of releases, gather feedback, and coordinate communication around feature deployments and breaking changes.

Compensation & benefits

Salary

USD 180,000 – 240,000 (annual)

Stock options

Available

Benefits

Comprehensive Health & Wellness Coverage

Full medical and dental benefits with a separate mental health budget to access counseling, therapy, and wellness services. Coverage includes preventative care, specialist access, and prescription drug plans.

Extended Parental Leave

100% salary top-up for parental leave for up to 6 months, providing flexible family planning support beyond standard benefits.

Generous Paid Time Off

6 weeks of vacation (30 working days) annually, significantly above industry standard, enabling meaningful rest and professional development time.

Personal Enrichment Benefits

Dedicated benefits budget for arts and culture, fitness and well-being activities, quality time, and workspace improvement to support holistic employee development.

Remote-Flexible Work Arrangement

Flexible work model with office locations in Toronto, New York, San Francisco, London, and Paris, plus co-working stipend for distributed team members.

Weekly Lunch Stipend & In-Office Meals

Weekly lunch allowance combined with in-office catered lunches and snacks for employees working on-site, supporting nutrition and team connection.

Equity & Stock Options

Competitive equity package with stock options as part of total compensation, aligning employee interests with company growth and success.

Inclusive & Diverse Work Culture

Commitment to open, inclusive culture celebrating diverse perspectives required for great product building. Accessibility accommodations available throughout the recruitment and employment process.

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Cohere

Cohere

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Cohere is a leading enterprise AI company focused on building powerful large language models (LLMs) and tools for businesses. The company's mission is to empower enterprises to integrate cutting-edge AI capabilities into their products and operations, making AI accessible and practical for real-world applications. Cohere offers a range of APIs that allow developers and organizations to harness generative AI for tasks such as text generation, summarization, intelligent search, and conversation. They operate within the rapidly expanding artificial intelligence software market, serving a diverse global clientele.

Toronto, CanadaFounded 2019cohere.com

Tech Stack

Languages
Python
Frameworks
LLM Frameworks (LangChain, Hugging Face Transformers)Agile & SAFe Frameworks
Databases
Distributed Databases & Cache Layers
Tools
LinearGitHubSlackFigma or Similar Visualization ToolsData Visualization & Analytics Platforms
Other
Container Orchestration (Kubernetes Conceptual Understanding)API-First Product ArchitectureMonitoring & Observability Tools
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