AI Program Manager (Artificial Intelligence)

Company

• A global manufacturer with a strong presence across North America and a long-standing reputation for engineering, innovation, and operational excellence. The North American organization is investing heavily in digital transformation and the practical application of Artificial Intelligence to improve how work gets done.
• This is an opportunity to join an organization where AI is being treated as a business tool—not simply a technology experiment. The goal is to identify real operational challenges, eliminate repetitive work and process waste, improve quality, and create measurable business value across the organization.
• The company offers an environment where cross-functional collaboration, continuous improvement, and innovation are encouraged. Employees have the opportunity to work with teams across Operations, Sales, Marketing, IT, HR, and Finance while contributing to initiatives that can have a tangible impact across multiple manufacturing locations.

The Opportunity

• As the AI Program Manager, you will lead the development and execution of an enterprise AI program focused on turning practical opportunities into measurable results.
• You will work directly with business leaders and subject-matter experts to identify where AI, automation, and intelligent workflows can create capacity, reduce costs, improve the employee and customer experience, increase revenue, and eliminate waste.
• This role combines program management, business process improvement, AI/automation, stakeholder leadership, and change management. You'll take initiatives from initial opportunity identification through pilot, measurement, adoption, and broader implementation—while ensuring appropriate governance, documentation, cybersecurity, privacy, and risk controls are maintained.

What You'll Do

Identify & Evaluate Opportunities

• Meet with business stakeholders to understand objectives, pain points, operational constraints, and desired outcomes.
• Translate broad business goals into clearly defined AI and automation opportunities and actionable project requirements.
• Partner with individual departments to develop straightforward business cases.
• Establish performance baselines and quantify potential benefits, including cost savings, labor-hour avoidance, efficiency gains, improved quality, and other measurable outcomes.

Lead the AI Program

• Partner with business leaders to evaluate and prioritize initiatives based on business value, potential impact, labor-hour avoidance, risk mitigation, feasibility, and available resources.
• Develop and maintain an AI program roadmap focused on delivering meaningful results through short, iterative releases.
• Balance business impact and technical feasibility when determining sequencing and priorities.
• Lead stage-gated initiatives from scope and planning → pilot → validation → scale in alignment with established project governance and Center of Excellence practices.
• Establish appropriate decision-making forums, risk controls, milestones, and checkpoints throughout the delivery process.
• Work closely with Business and IT teams to identify and develop the data, infrastructure, applications, and tools necessary to support the AI roadmap.

Drive Adoption & Business Value

• Ensure ownership of AI agents, automations, and workflows is successfully transitioned to the appropriate business stakeholders.
• Partner with change-management resources to drive adoption and ensure AI solutions become embedded into everyday business processes.
• Help move successful AI initiatives from individual projects into sustainable ways of working across the organization.
• Establish and maintain meaningful program metrics so the value of AI investments is visible, measurable, and auditable.
• Track and communicate outcomes such as financial savings, labor-hour avoidance, efficiency improvements, waste reduction, improved quality, and enhanced employee or customer experiences.
• Share knowledge and practical AI expertise throughout the organization.
• Coach business stakeholders to recognize potential AI opportunities within their own processes and workflows.

Governance, Privacy & Risk

• Partner with Legal and HR to ensure AI initiatives appropriately address data privacy, responsible AI practices, and applicable AI-use policies.
• Ensure AI solutions follow corporate IT cybersecurity, data protection, and risk-management requirements.
• Maintain required corporate policies, procedures, work instructions, project documentation, and governance records throughout the program lifecycle.

What You'll Bring

• A combination of business and technical thinking, along with the ability to move ideas from concept to execution.
• Bachelor's degree in Project or Program Management, Engineering, Manufacturing, Computer Science, Data/Analytics, or a related discipline.
• 3+ years of experience leading data, AI, automation, or digital transformation programs within manufacturing or operational environments.
• Demonstrated success delivering measurable business results, including hard-dollar savings and/or labor-hour avoidance.
• Strong command of program-management fundamentals, including business cases, roadmaps, financial analysis, prioritization, governance, and stage-gate delivery.
• Excellent communication, influencing, and stakeholder-management skills with the ability to work effectively across Operations, Sales, Marketing, IT, HR, and Finance.
• Ability to translate business problems into practical technology and AI solutions.
• A combination of business and technical thinking, along with the ability to move ideas from concept to execution.

Preferred Background

• Experience working in a manufacturing or closely related operational environment.
• Lean or Six Sigma certification.
• Experience incorporating AI and automation into continuous-improvement initiatives.
• Hands-on familiarity with modern AI and data platforms and tools, particularly Microsoft Copilot Studio, Microsoft Fabric, and Microsoft Azure AI Foundry.

Why This Is a Great Opportunity

This is more than a traditional project-management role. You'll have the opportunity to help shape how a large North American manufacturing organization adopts and applies AI in the real world.

You'll work with leaders across the business, identify opportunities that can make a measurable difference, and see successful solutions move from an idea on paper to something employees actually use every day. The breadth of the role also provides exposure to operations, technology, finance, HR, sales, marketing, and continuous improvement.

For someone who enjoys solving business problems, leading cross-functional initiatives, and turning emerging technology into practical results, this is an opportunity to have a meaningful impact while helping build the organization's next generation of operational capabilities.