Remote Research Program Manager - AI & Science Impact

FirstPrinciples; Canada; On-site; CAD 110,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-first

Flexible schedule

Ownership

Cutting-edge ideas

Job summary

FirstPrinciples is building AI systems at the frontier of scientific discovery. We are a remote-first team across Canada, the US, the UK and beyond, tackling ambitious questions that combine curiosity with rigor.

As a Senior Product Manager/Program Manager, you will define research programs, steward our ROI framework, and establish evidence plans to accelerate learning while guiding technical teams toward outcomes that matter for product strategy.

Qualifications

• 5+ years as a product manager or program manager in technology or research organizations.
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or related technical field.
• Deep understanding of program management craft and practices, with the ability to guide ambiguous technical programs, make evidence-based decisions under uncertainty, and apply product thinking where useful without constraining scientific exploration.
• Strong bias toward action and learning velocity, where you look for the fastest credible path to determining whether an idea deserves greater investment.
• Comfortable holding highly technical teams accountable for commitments, decisions, and outcomes while earning trust through intellectual curiosity and sound judgment.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, and comfort working in a fast-paced startup environment with a remote-first team.
• Motivated by building a research culture that combines scientific ambition with urgency, focus, accountability, and a relentless desire to learn faster.

Responsibilities

• Partner with research leads to define clear research programs, priorities, hypotheses, milestones, and expected outcomes
• Operationalize and steward our Research Portfolio & ROI Framework - assessing research bets by ambition, uncertainty, impact, maturity, time horizon, confidence, cost, and product applicability at the program and portfolio level
• Establish stage-appropriate evidence plans, KPIs, and leading and lagging indicators for research projects, including signals that increase or reduce confidence, validate progress, or decisively kill a direction
• Create operating rhythms that increase the pace of Research: regular reviews, clear owners, intermediate deliverables, decision points, and tight follow-through
• Track research initiatives against their objectives and investment, keeping teams accountable for progress while preserving room for genuine scientific exploration
• Identify stalled projects, weak assumptions, and diminishing returns early, and drive explicit decisions to iterate, redirect, pause, or stop work rather than allowing projects to drift
• Connect research priorities to company, product, and technical strategy, ensuring the research portfolio reflects the capabilities and differentiated advantages we most need to build
• Translate research progress into clear decisions, implications, and tradeoffs for Product, Engineering, and leadership, while helping successful research transition into product capabilities, assets, or future strategic options

Skills

Product management

Program management

Technical background

Decision making

Communication skills

Education

BS in CS/Engineering

Job description

FirstPrinciples is building AI systems at the frontier of scientific discovery. We are a remote-first team across Canada, the US, the UK and beyond, tackling ambitious questions that combine curiosity with rigor.

As a Senior Product Manager/Program Manager, you will define research programs, steward our ROI framework, and establish evidence plans to accelerate learning while guiding technical teams toward outcomes that matter for product strategy.