AI Program Manager
Randstad Digital Americas · Chicago, IL · 2 wk ago
OTHR$54.09–$64.09/hrFull-time
Location: Chicago, Illinois | Job type: Contract | Work hours: 8am to 5pm
About the Role
Lead end-to-end project planning and execution for AI programs spanning discovery, prototyping, pilot, and production. Partner with the AI Product Owner, Agentic Framework Engineer, Full-Stack Developer, and REs to manage scope, timelines, dependencies, and governance. Own delivery cadences, RAID management, stakeholder communication, and operational readiness (support, monitoring, knowledge management).
Responsibilities
- Establish and maintain integrated project plans for AI initiatives (milestones, dependencies, critical path)
- Run Agile ceremonies (Scrum/Kanban) while adapting to hybrid delivery needs for model and platform work
- Manage RAID logs (Risks, Assumptions, Issues, Dependencies) with clear owners, due dates, and mitigations
- Coordinate cross-functional delivery across Product, Engineering (Agentic Full-Stack), RE, Data, and Compliance
- Track budgets, vendor engagement, and resourcing; maintain accurate status and forecast reports
- Ensure Responsible AI governance: data privacy controls, model risk management, bias fairness checks, explainability, human-in-the-loop processes
- Drive readiness for production support (runbooks, incident playbooks, SLAs/SLOs, observability, ServiceNow Knowledge Management alignment)
- Partner on release planning, change management, and operational handoffs; ensure post-launch retrospectives and continuous improvement
- Maintain project artifacts in Jira/Confluence; uphold documentation standards (JSON-first specs where applicable)
- Facilitate stakeholder communications: executive updates, decision logs, and outcome-based reporting (KPIs/OKRs)
- Support evaluation pipelines (A/B tests, offline benchmarks, red-team testing) and acceptance criteria for AI features
- Align security and compliance reviews (access controls, audit trails, policy exceptions) with enterprise standards
Requirements
- 7+ years leading complex technology projects, including 3+ years delivering AI/ML or LLM-based solutions
- Demonstrated success managing multi-team programs with clear outcomes in regulated environments
- Strong Agile expertise (Scrum/Kanban) and hybrid planning for platform/model work
- Proficiency with Jira/Confluence and standard PM artifacts (RAID, roadmaps, status, budget tracking)
- Proven ability to coordinate data, engineering, product, and reliability engineering teams; excellent written and verbal communication
- Certifications: PMP, PMI-ACP and/or CSM
- Experience with GenAI, agentic systems, LangChain/LangGraph orchestration, and RAG pipelines
- Production Support Experience
- Familiarity with model risk management, Responsible AI frameworks, and evaluation tooling
- Exposure to LLMOps/MLOps practices (observability, rollback, feature flags, CI/CD for models)
- Financial services or similarly regulated industry experience
- Comfort collaborating with production support reliability engineers for operational readiness (SLOs, incident playbooks, post-mortems)
- Bachelor's degree
Skills
- A/B tests
- Agile
- AI features
- Audit trails
- Confluence
- CI/CD
- FastAPI
- Jira
- JSON
- Knowledge management
- Large Language Model (LLM)
- LLMOps
- MLOps practices
- Python
- RAID
- Relational database
- Reliability engineering
- Scrum
- ServiceNow
- Documentation standards
- AI Product
- Adapting
- Verbal communication
- Coordinate
- Reliability
- Acceptance criteria
- Access controls
- Budget tracking
- Budgets
- Continuous improvement
- Change management
- Prototyping
- Responsible AI
- Data privacy
- Dependency management
- Forecast
- Governance
- Kanban
- OKRs
- Evaluation metrics
- Operational readiness
- Program Management
- Project planning
- Compliance reviews
- Risks
- Model risk management
- Safety
- Stakeholder communication
- Stakeholder Management
- Tooling
- Vendor engagement
- Workflows
Pay
$54.09 - 64.09 per hour
Benefits
- Medical, prescription, dental, and vision insurance
- AD&D and life insurance offerings
- Short-term disability
- 401K plan (all benefits are based on eligibility)