Program & Project Manager
Program and Project Managers in AI companies orchestrate the delivery of complex, multi-functional initiatives—from autonomous vehicle deployments and AI product launches to infrastructure scaling and organizational transformations. They own the end-to-end planning, execution, and risk management of programs that span engineering, product, operations, and commercial teams, translating technical and business complexity into clear roadmaps and milestones. What sets this role apart is the combination of strategic ownership with hands-on execution: these managers are expected to dive into substantive details, develop informed points of view on trade-offs, and personally drive work across functions to unblock progress. They typically sit within fast-growing AI organizations where established playbooks don't exist, operating with urgency while maintaining clarity and alignment across senior leadership, execution teams, and external stakeholders.
Measured across 166 of 169 open postings.
This role is advertised at 4 levels, so a single figure for the role would describe none of them. Experience and pay are the midpoints for each level on its own.
| Level | Share | Median years | Median pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mid | 16%(27) | 4 | — |
| Senior | 20%(34) | 6.5 | $217k |
| Manager | 45%(74) | 7 | $209k |
| Director | 9%(15) | 7 | — |
A dash means too few postings stated it to report a midpoint. Most companies do not publish a salary band, so pay is indicative rather than a market rate. 3 levels with fewer than 10 open postings are not shown.
“Leverages cutting edge AI and data tools for analysis, problem solving, data visualization, and automation”
“You will use AI and automation to reduce repetitive work and help teams operate at greater scale”
“Drive adoption of AI, automation, and workflow tools to increase executive leverage, reduce manual work, improve information flow”
“Technical fluency to engage substantively with researchers: you can follow a discussion about an RL training run, read a set of eval results and form reasonable hypotheses”
Requirements are a share of every open posting, so a role missing from this list is one where almost nobody asks. Work mode is different: many postings never say, so that figure counts only the ones that do. A posting stops being advertised when it is filled, cancelled or reorganised, so read the last figure as how long these stay on the market, not as time to hire.
Share of new postings expecting AI in the person's own work, by the week they appeared. Measured on the same 124 companies throughout, every one of them tracked since 18 May, so the line is not moved by us adding companies.
Line is a four-week average; dots are individual weeks, 17 postings each on average. Weekly values span 50 points across this window, so read the line, not the gap between two dots.
Skills
What companies are looking for in this role.
Program and project management
Process design and improvement
Technical program management
Cross-functional delivery execution
Budget control and financial modeling
Operational metrics and analytics
Supplier and vendor management
Demand and supply planning
Cross-functional collaboration
Change management
Technical team leadership and mentoring
Executive communication and storytelling
Ownership in ambiguity
Structured problem solving
Technology
The tools and technologies that define this role.
Open Jobs
169 open Program & Project Manager jobs across 49 companies.
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