Technical Program Manager (ask)

ai71; Abu Dhabi; On-site; AED 400,000 - 640,000; Full time

Job summary

ai71 is expanding its Engineering and Product teams and is looking for a Technical Program Manager to drive the execution of the ASK agentic platform. You will work with Product Managers, Tech Leads, Designers, Software Engineers, ML Engineers and DevOps to align priorities and delivery.

The right candidate has 5+ years in TPM or related roles, engineering background, and the ability to read code and influence decisions. We value curiosity, ownership, and clear writing.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in Technical Program/Program Management or related delivery roles.
• Engineering background is highly valued.
• Ability to read code and critique technical designs.
• Experience coordinating cross-functional delivery in fast-paced environments.
• Strong written and verbal communication; able to influence without authority.

Responsibilities

• Execute and align priorities across PMs, Tech Leads, Designers, and Engineers to deliver projects on time.
• Lead at least one complex cross-functional program end-to-end across Engineering, Product, and leadership.
• Contribute to shaping TPM practices, rituals, and hiring/branding initiatives.

Skills

Technical Program Management

Engineering background

Cross-functional collaboration

Stakeholder management

Communication & influence

Education

Engineering background or degree

Tools

Code reading

Job description

About ai71

AI71 is an industry leader in artificial intelligence, delivering innovative solutions that empower developers, businesses and governments to solve complex challenges. AI71 builds secure, enterprise-ready applications powered by cutting-edge technology, tailored for knowledge workers and sector-specific needs. AI71 bridges the gap between advanced AI and real-world impact. Guided by a strong commitment to research and responsibility, we create transformative solutions that drive progress and empower organizations to leverage AI for meaningful outcomes.

About ai71

AI71 is an industry leader in artificial intelligence, delivering innovative solutions that empower developers, businesses and governments to solve complex challenges. AI71 builds secure, enterprise-ready applications powered by cutting-edge technology, tailored for knowledge workers and sector-specific needs. AI71 bridges the gap between advanced AI and real-world impact. Guided by a strong commitment to research and responsibility, we create transformative solutions that drive progress and empower organizations to leverage AI for meaningful outcomes.

Role overview

As AI71 continues to grow and our Engineering and Product teams expand, Technical Program Management has become critical to ensuring we deliver on our product roadmap. This role sits inside the TPM team supporting ASK, our agentic platform that helps enterprises and governments search across their data, generate content, and orchestrate multi-agent workflows across the tools their teams already use.

The TPM team is intentionally lean and goes deep where it matters most. Every TPM carries two things at once: one or more teams they are embedded in, and one or more cross-team initiatives they own end-to-end. The first keeps you grounded in the build. The second is what makes the function strategic instead of operational. Our ambition is for the TPM function to be a force multiplier across Engineering and Product, not a reporting layer. We like to try new ideas, whether it is to accelerate delivery, structure the organization, or develop a unique culture. By joining a close-knit team, you can have an impact in many different ways and shape how this function works as it grows.

What you will do

Here is what the day-to-day of a TPM at AI71 looks like:

Execute: You make a difference every day inside the team you sit with, enhancing clarity, direction, and scope, and keeping all the parts together with the other roles around you: Product Managers, Tech Leads, Designers, Software Engineers, ML Engineers and DevOps. You partner with them to identify and align the right priorities, work with the team to deliver projects on time and with the right quality, dive into PRDs and technical designs to surface key dependencies and risks early, and orchestrate work across the teams involved. Typically you accompany one or two teams in their delivery, ranging from technical projects to more functional ones tied to ASK's evolution.

Influence: You own and drive at least one complex cross-functional program end-to-end: the kind of initiative that touches multiple teams, spans Engineering, Product, and leadership, and would not happen without someone holding it together. You lead initiatives of various sizes to tackle the needs and issues that come with growth, and you leverage your soft power to influence the organization and challenge the status quo. You help teams optimize the way they work.

Cultivate: You contribute to building the TPM function itself: facilitating retrospectives, shaping ways-of-working rituals, and bringing new ideas for how we operate as a team and how we represent what we do internally and externally. You also contribute to AI71's hiring and branding initiatives for the TPM and Engineering functions.

The team

As a team, we maintain a shared mission and a roadmap that evolves with the organization. We are open to different styles, and we rotate responsibilities and initiatives between us so everyone gets to stretch. We regularly discuss our challenges, sound new ideas off each other, and learn out loud. You will grow as an individual through a culture of ongoing feedback and the variety of contexts the role exposes you to.

Who you are

You bring 5+ years of experience in Technical Program Management, Program Management, or an adjacent role where you have coordinated technical delivery in a fast-paced environment. Engineering management, technical product management, or production-related roles are also typical paths in, and we are open to a diversity of backgrounds. A background in engineering is highly valued. The position does not require coding yourself, but you should be able to read code and challenge a technical design.

Beyond experience, here are the qualities we are looking for:

• Resourcefulness: you like being dropped into a new context and figuring out your own way forward. You are comfortable in environments where the playbook is still being written, and you shape the function rather than wait to be handed one.
• Technical curiosity: you can dive into AI concepts and hold substantive discussions with engineers: critiquing designs, surfacing risks, asking the question that makes a tech lead pause. You know your way around the key building blocks of modern AI products (LLMs, agents, evals, RAG, orchestration), or are eager to get there quickly.
• Ownership: you have a keen sense of ownership and can point to complex programs that would not have shipped without you. Not facilitating, owning.
• Soft power: you influence without authority, push back without making it personal, and stay credible with engineers, PMs, and leadership at the same time.
• Clarity: you connect the dots in ways others do not, especially around cross-team dependencies and organizational bottlenecks, and you strive to reach alignment through shared understanding, clear writing, and consistent direction.

Prior experience around agentic systems, AI platforms, or enterprise SaaS is a real plus.

We acknowledge that many candidates may not meet every requirement listed above. If your experience looks a little different but you believe you can bring value to the role, we would love to hear from you.