Sr Project Manager - AI Program Leadership

Sr Project Manager - AI Program Leader

Remote - CST OR MST Time Zones

Sr Project Manager - AI Program Leadership

POSITION SUMMARY

Acting independently under consultative direction, the Senior Project Manager is responsible for program management and end-to-end delivery across complex, highly visible technical initiatives. The role manages planning, prioritization, execution, timing, scope, quality, cost, dependencies, and organizational readiness while ensuring alignment with company strategy, commitments, and goals. The Senior Project Manager anticipates and escalates risks, resolves barriers, and establishes the governance and decision-making discipline required to drive successful outcomes from initiation through implementation and transition to operations.

This position requires a combination of senior program leadership and practical technical fluency in Artificial Intelligence and customer interaction technologies. Key domains include Agentic AI and Conversational AI, AWS cloud platforms, and IVR/voice-channel modernization. The role ensures these technical workstreams remain aligned to strategic objectives, architecture and governance expectations, delivery timelines, performance needs, customer experience outcomes, and measurable business value.

Because the program requires informed leadership across AI, cloud, integration, and voice technologies, candidates should bring demonstrated industry experience leading comparable technology transformation programs rather than solely generalist project management experience.

DUTIES/RESPONSIBILITIES/ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

• Own end-to-end program delivery from concept and business case through planning, execution, implementation, stabilization, and transition to operations.
• Develop and maintain integrated program plans, schedules, estimates, resource plans, budgets, dependency maps, milestones, and executive status reporting across multiple technical workstreams.
• Establish program governance, decision rights, escalation paths, delivery standards, and operating rhythms that create transparency, accountability, and timely decision-making.
• Serve as the primary program point of contact for executive sponsors, business leaders, product owners, engineering teams, architecture, information security, risk/compliance, operations, vendors, and other stakeholders.
• Lead Agentic AI and Conversational AI workstreams, ensuring use cases, capabilities, orchestration, human-in-the-loop controls, evaluation criteria, and implementation priorities align with strategic goals and customer/business outcomes.
• Partner with AI, data, security, legal, compliance, and risk stakeholders to incorporate responsible AI governance, model/vendor risk management, privacy, security, testing, monitoring, and production-readiness requirements into the delivery plan.
• Provide program leadership for AI-based solutions, facilitating well-governed architecture and platform decisions that balance security, resiliency, scalability, integration, cost, performance, and delivery timelines.
• Oversee IVR and voice-channel modernization as a major program workstream, including conversational design, telephony/contact-center dependencies, integrations, routing, testing, migration/cutover, operational readiness, and customer experience considerations.
• Coordinate cross-workstream dependencies among AI capabilities, cloud infrastructure, APIs/integrations, data, contact-center/IVR platforms, security controls, and business processes.
• Translate technical complexity into clear business implications, options, decisions, risks, and recommendations for senior stakeholders without replacing the accountability of engineering or architecture owners.
• Clarify program goals, scope, success measures, deliverables, and priorities with stakeholders; manage scope changes and interventions required to achieve intended outcomes.
• Identify, assess, quantify, prioritize, and actively manage program risks, issues, assumptions, constraints, and dependencies; develop mitigation and contingency plans for high-priority risks.
• Escalate challenging issues that jeopardize program success professionally, objectively, and with clear decision requests and recommended paths forward.
• Ensure project and program deliverables meet agreed quality standards, acceptance criteria, governance requirements, timelines, and budget commitments.
• Create executive-ready reporting and dashboards that communicate progress, forecast, financial health, risks, dependencies, decisions, benefits, and key performance indicators.
• Lead vendor and partner coordination where applicable, including delivery commitments, integration dependencies, performance expectations, and issue resolution.
• Drive testing and implementation readiness across technical and business teams, including requirements traceability, test strategy, UAT coordination, cutover planning, rollback/contingency planning, training, communications, and hypercare.
• Participate in change management and process improvement initiatives and recommend improvements to delivery procedures, controls, governance, and operating practices.
• Support benefits realization by defining measurable outcomes and partnering with business/product owners to track adoption, operational performance, customer experience, and value after implementation.

EDUCATION

• Bachelor's degree in business, computer science, information systems, engineering, or a related field, or equivalent relevant work experience.
• Advanced degree (MBA, MS, or similar) preferred.

REGISTRATIONS/CERTIFICATIONS/LICENSING

• Project Management Professional (PMP) certification required.
• Agile certification (e.g., PMI-ACP, Scrum, SAFe) preferred.
• AWS cloud certification preferred.
• AI/ML, cloud, contact-center, or related technology certifications are a plus.

REQUIRED/PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• 10+ years of progressively responsible project/program management experience, including leadership of large, complex, cross-functional technology implementations.
• Demonstrated industry experience leading AI-enabled transformation programs, preferably involving Agentic AI, Conversational AI, virtual assistants, intelligent automation, or generative AI capabilities.
• Working knowledge of AI solution delivery concepts, including model/service integration, prompt and conversation design considerations, retrieval/knowledge integration, evaluation, guardrails, observability, and responsible AI controls.
• Experience delivering solutions on AWS or comparable enterprise cloud platforms and collaborating effectively with cloud architects and engineering teams on architecture, security, resiliency, scalability, and cost decisions.
• Experience leading IVR, contact-center, telephony, voice-bot, or conversational customer-service implementations; experience with platform migration or modernization strongly preferred.
• Strong knowledge of systems development methodologies and experience with requirements, solution delivery, testing, implementation, and operational transition.
• Experience operating in Agile, hybrid, and/or scaled delivery environments and coordinating multiple teams with interdependent backlogs and milestones.
• Strong financial and vendor management skills, including forecasting, budget management, resource planning, statements of work, and delivery accountability.
• Strong analytical, documentation, facilitation, negotiation, and executive presentation skills.
• Ability to develop and maintain strategic partnerships with senior business leaders, technology leaders, project sponsors, product owners, customers, vendors, and globally distributed teams.
• Ability to communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical audiences and to facilitate decisions where business, architecture, risk, and delivery priorities intersect.
• Experience with enterprise project and collaboration tools such as Microsoft Project, Jira, Confluence, Visio, Power BI, or equivalent tools; SQL/data literacy is a plus.

SUCCESS MEASURES

• Predictable delivery against approved scope, milestones, budget, quality, and strategic outcomes.
• Timely resolution of cross-functional risks, dependencies, architecture decisions, and governance requirements.
• Successful production launch and stabilization of AI, AWS, and IVR/voice capabilities with appropriate operational controls.

• Measurable adoption, customer experience, operational performance, and business-value outcomes defined with program sponsors

Benefits: