Technical Program Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering (Japan)

Who are we?

Our mission is to scale intelligence to serve humanity. We’re training and deploying frontier models for developers and enterprises who are building AI systems to power magical experiences like content generation, semantic search, RAG, and agents. We believe that our work is instrumental to the widespread adoption of AI.

We obsess over what we build. Each one of us is responsible for contributing to increasing the capabilities of our models and the value they drive for our customers. We like to work hard and move fast to do what’s best for our customers.

Cohere is a team of researchers, engineers, designers, and more, who are passionate about their craft. Each person is one of the best in the world at what they do. We believe that a diverse range of perspectives is a requirement for building great products.

Join us on our mission and shape the future!

Why this role?

We’re seeking an experienced Technical Program Manager to join Cohere’s customer-facing Engineering Program Management team. We need someone with curiosity, drive, independence, and leadership, who has hands-on experience working directly with customers and managing projects for enterprise-grade software or enterprise-focused machine learning solutions. In return, you’ll have the unique opportunity to shape Cohere’s operations, collaborate with leading minds in the LLM space, work directly with our Strategic Customers as well as Applied ML (AML) Engineering, Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE), Platform , Product and Go-to-Market teams, and be the “technical” voice of Cohere for the customer. You will get a chance to create extremely high-impact contributions to our fast-growing company, product and culture.

Please Note: This role is open to candidates based in Japan.

As a Technical Program Manager, you will:

• Communicate: Provide clear, timely, and objective communication across the tech organization, Cohere teams, leadership, and most importantly - our strategic customers and external partners.

• Optimize: Break down complex issues into strategies, driving engineering alignment with product, business, and marketing while fostering collaboration.

• Plan: Create and manage project schedules, identify dependencies, manage risks, and drive organizational alignment.

• Execute: Ensure on-time delivery, identify development needs, and establish checkpoints for status updates.

• Problem solve: Proactively identify and resolve issues, coordinate cross-functional dependencies, and prioritize impacts to schedule and product quality.

You may be a good fit if:

• Fluency in both English and Japanese (written and verbal) is required for this role.

• You have at least 7 years of experience as an Engineering or Technical Program Manager, with at least 2 years in customer-facing technical delivery and operations focused on enterprise-grade AI software/solutions

• Knowledge or experience with LLM training or optimization would be a key differentiator

• You are problem-focused and making customers successful really excites you

• You are detail-oriented and extremely self-organized. You love enabling people and teams around you, and are excellent at capturing detailed notes/action items during highly technical meetings and tracking progress.

• You have a Bias for Action - you are very execution focused and you like getting things done.

• You have experience working with cross-functional teams (more than one team) to get technical products, services or solutions shipped to an internal or an external customer and can independently own tracking and reporting across multiple work-streams, with owners in different time-zones.

• You are comfortable holding leaders and individual contributors accountable. You can be assertive while remaining diplomatic. You are not afraid to follow up with people to ensure shipping within committed deadlines.

If some of the above doesn’t line up perfectly with your experience, we still encourage you to apply!

We value and celebrate diversity and strive to create an inclusive work environment for all. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and are committed to providing equal opportunities. Should you require any accommodations during the recruitment process, please submit an Accommodations Request Form, and we will work together to meet your needs.

Full-Time Employees at Cohere enjoy these Perks:

🤝 An open and inclusive culture and work environment 

🧑‍💻 Work closely with a team on the cutting edge of AI research 

🍽 Weekly lunch stipend, in-office lunches & snacks

🦷 Full health and dental benefits, including a separate budget to take care of your mental health 

🐣 100% Parental Leave top-up for up to 6 months

🎨 Personal enrichment benefits towards arts and culture, fitness and well-being, quality time, and workspace improvement

🏙 Remote-flexible, offices in Toronto, New York, San Francisco, London and Paris, as well as a co-working stipend

✈️ 6 weeks of vacation (30 working days!)