Technical Program Manager, Science & Strategic Initiatives

At Google DeepMind, we value diversity of experience, knowledge, backgrounds and perspectives and harness these qualities to create extraordinary impact. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of sex, race, religion or belief, ethnic or national origin, disability, age, citizenship, marital, domestic or civil partnership status, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, or related condition (including breastfeeding) or any other basis as protected by applicable law. If you have a disability or additional need that requires accommodation, please do not hesitate to let us know.

Snapshot

The role of the Program Management Team is to organise and enable our research teams to be the best at what they do and to make fast-paced progress towards our mission. We continually pursue scalable and sustainable ways to optimise research, striving to ensure we cultivate an environment where people can be both highly collaborative and deeply creative, making responsible and pioneering research progress at pace. We build strong relationships with teams, bringing clarity to ambiguity and providing stability during change.

About Us

Artificial Intelligence could be one of humanity’s most useful inventions. At Google DeepMind, we’re a team of scientists, engineers, machine learning experts and more, working together to advance the state of the art in artificial intelligence. We use our technologies for widespread public benefit and scientific discovery, and collaborate with others on critical challenges, ensuring safety and ethics are the highest priority.

The role

The role will be to lead and shape complex programs in Google DeepMind’s Science and Strategic Initiatives Unit, spanning critical areas such as AI application to scientific challenges (including LLMs and agents), provenance and watermarking technologies for generative media (like SynthID), and Computer Science research (such as AlphaEvolve).
There will also be the opportunity to work on projects and processes spanning across the Science and Strategic Initiatives Unit.

Key Responsibilities

• Drive all required elements of end-to-end project planning and delivery, using your knowledge of project methodologies including tools and techniques such as retrospectives, agile boards, project plans, risk trackers, etc

• Create clarity and resolve ambiguity. Work with your team to organise and optimise research into clear goals and objectives.

• Directly apply your technical understanding and acquired knowledge of your effort domains to inform effort strategy and drive delivery.

• Work with leadership, the team, and partners to translate the research outcomes into Commercial, Societal and Reputational impact. This could take the form of products, demos, publications, external partnerships and more.

• Drive strategic partnerships with industry leaders and external platforms to foster ecosystem-wide adoption of research outcomes.

• Facilitate conversations, meetings and opportunities for collaboration to drive the best outcomes; create connections and relationships

• Track progress, maintain up to date information and relevant technical documentation, anticipate and propose solutions to issues and risks

• Identify opportunities to improve ways of working, tools or processes

• Proactively identify requirements such as technical dependencies or the need for compute

• Coach individuals to overcome challenges and ensure the conditions are in place to enable teams to produce pioneering and mission focused work

• Lead brainstorms and idea sharing, identify key themes, simplify complex problems and discover solutions

• Lead the drive for engagement across the team by building and maintaining relationships, sharing constructive feedback, challenging established ways of thinking and inspiring them to achieve their full potential

• Track the success of programs against their aims, goals and objectives

• Demonstrate a curious mindset and a commitment to learning and understanding your team’s technical field.

About you

In order to set you up for success as a Program Manager at Google DeepMind, we look for the following skills and experience:

• Knowledge and expertise in project/program management with the skill to navigate through ambiguity and adapt plans and strategies as project conditions change

• Experience delivering projects with teams of different sizes to deliver projects at various lifecycle stages independently and through others

• Experience in solving complex challenges, implementing scalable and sustainable solutions

• Strategic mindset to manage high-stakes external products and partnerships while maintaining pace of research progress.

• Knowledge and experience in utilising coaching techniques to grow individuals from diverse backgrounds in a high performing environment

• Strong communication skills, ability to develop meaningful relationships with key stakeholders and leverage these to influence action and outcomes

• Experience working in fast-paced and constantly changing environments, acting as a sounding board as individuals go through the change cycle and supporting during challenging times

• Skilled in collaboration with diverse individuals with varying backgrounds (e.g. engineering, computational biology, product management)

In addition, the following would be an advantage:

• You are passionate about the sciences and AGI & proactive about learning and acquiring knowledge to enhance your domain knowledge

• Knowledge and familiarity with Life Sciences, Chemistry, Computer Science, Maths or other STEM fields.

• Knowledge and familiarity with AI (particularly LLMs) and machine learning.

• Ability and curiosity to use AI tools practically and effectively in your work, with a recognition and awareness of AI’s responsible use, risks, and limitations.