OB Collective
AI Program Manager
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About the Role
OB Collective develops independent verification technology for organisations operating in government, regulated, and high-assurance environments. Our work is concerned with establishing reliable evidence about information and automated actions before organisations rely on them.
We're building a senior technical team for a UK public-sector R&D programme focused on the cybersecurity and operational assurance of AI agents. We're looking for a Technical Programme & Delivery Lead to take overall responsibility for delivery.
As AI agents gain access to organisational data, credentials, tools, APIs, and enterprise systems, organisations need stronger ways to understand the conditions surrounding consequential actions and the risk those actions create. The programme will extend an existing software capability into agentic environments, integrate it with existing security and control systems, and evaluate its behaviour under realistic operational, failure, and adversarial conditions.
There is an existing technical capability and a defined research direction. The challenge is to turn that starting point into a rigorously engineered and evaluated capability suitable for subsequent operational trial.
You will lead a small team of senior engineers and security specialists and work closely with the Principal Technical Lead. You will own the integrated delivery baseline, resources, costs, dependencies, risks, milestone evidence, and stakeholder coordination.
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Roles are UK-based, outside IR35, and primarily remote with occasional travel for workshops and technical activity.
What You’ll Do
- Own the integrated programme plan, work breakdown structure, critical path, and delivery schedule.
- Lead mobilisation and establish a practical delivery rhythm across engineering, integration, platform, security, and evaluation workstreams.
- Maintain control of scope, resources, costs, forecasts, risks, assumptions, issues, dependencies, and changes.
- Translate contractual and research outcomes into clear work packages, acceptance evidence, and accountable owners.
- Maintain milestone readiness and ensure that supporting technical evidence is available before formal reviews.
- Work closely with the Principal Technical Lead to understand technical decisions, engineering dependencies, and their implications for delivery.
- Coordinate external security testing, specialist contributors, and practitioner evaluation.
- Keep research uncertainty visible without allowing it to become uncontrolled scope or delivery drift.
- Ensure negative findings, failed hypotheses, and technical limitations are captured and reflected in programme decisions.
- Lead stakeholder reporting and communicate progress, decisions, risks, and evidence clearly.
- Coordinate trial-readiness, exploitation, and handover activity towards the end of the programme.
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What We’re Looking For
- Significant experience leading complex software engineering, cybersecurity, systems, or technical R&D programmes.
- Direct personal responsibility for integrated programme planning and delivery control.
- Experience owning programme budgets, cost forecasts, and resource plans.
- Experience delivering against formal milestones, acceptance criteria, or contractual outcomes.
- Evidence of leading multidisciplinary teams containing senior engineers, architects, and specialist technical contributors.
- Sufficient technical fluency to challenge plans, understand engineering dependencies, and distinguish genuine technical uncertainty from delivery problems.
- Experience managing changing requirements without losing control of scope or commitments.
- Strong RAID, governance, decision, and change-control discipline.
- Ability to communicate credibly with both technical teams and senior stakeholders.
Preferred Experience
- Cybersecurity or secure-software programmes.
- AI, autonomous systems, or agentic technology.
- UK central government, defence, critical infrastructure, or another regulated environment.
- Government-funded R&D or innovation programmes.
- Evaluation, testing, or technical assurance programmes.
- Moving experimental technology towards operational trial or adoption.
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