Principal Program Manager

Principal Program Manager

Location: Remote (US) | Type: Contract | Experience: 10+ years | Pay: $90-$120/hr

About the Role

We're hiring a Principal Program Manager to run large-scale generative AI implementation programs inside enterprise organizations. This is the person who takes an AI capability that worked in a pilot and turns it into something thousands of people actually use, with governance, an adoption plan, and metrics behind it.

The client is a global digital consultancy that partners with a major enterprise software platform to deploy its generative AI tooling into large customer environments. You'll lead cross-functional teams of consultants, engineers, and subject matter experts through implementations where the technical work and the change management work are equally hard.

If you've watched AI programs stall because nobody owned the dependencies, the stage gates, or the executive alignment, this is the seat where you fix that.

What You'll Do

• Orchestrate large-scale implementation programs, keeping them tied to both business objectives and technical requirements
• Build the adoption plan: change management, skill development, process redesign, and the sequencing that makes it stick
• Stand up governance models, success metrics, and scalable roadmaps for embedding generative AI across client organizations
• Lead consultants, engineers, and SMEs through concurrent workstreams, managing integration points and dependencies before they turn into blockers
• Create and operationalize risk mitigation strategies that anticipate technical, organizational, and adoption problems early
• Run steering committee reviews, governance reviews, and executive business reviews that show real progress, not status theater
• Facilitate cross-program syncs and evolve the implementation approach as client priorities shift
• Influence teams you don't manage, and get your program's work moved up their list

Qualifications

• 10+ years in program or project management, including at least 5 years running enterprise software implementations
• Program and portfolio management experience with Scrum@Scale, SAFe, DA, or LeSS
• Deep understanding of AI/ML technologies, particularly how generative AI gets applied and integrated in enterprise contexts
• Comfort working across complex technical architectures and data ecosystems, with security, governance, and performance tradeoffs in play
• Proven ability to drive accountability and urgency across teams that don't report to you
• Discipline around frameworks, documentation, and stage gates, plus the judgment to tell when process is helping and when it's just slowing the program down

Why Join Us

You'll work alongside consultants and engineers deploying generative AI into some of the largest creative and content operations in the market. The programs are visible, the stakeholders are senior, and the outcomes get measured.

This is a contract engagement for someone who likes owning the hard middle of a program, where the strategy is already set and execution is what decides whether any of it works.