Program Manager, Research (12 month Fixed Term Contract)

Full Time
London, UK
6 months ago

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

This role will provide hands-on Program Management Support to Research/Engineering teams. This position is available for a fixed term of 6 months.

Key Responsibilities:

  • Work with your team on all required elements of end-to-end project planning and delivery, using your knowledge of project methodologies including tools and techniques such as stand ups, retrospectives, agile boards, project plans etc
  • Work with your team to organise and optimise research into clear goals and objectives
  • 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
  • You’ll support your team to pre-empt requirements such as technical dependencies or the need for compute power
  • Provide coaching for 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, help to identify key themes, simplify complex problems and discover solutions
  • Support 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
  • Evaluate 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, and your broader understanding of AGI, in order to inform how you enable people, teams and optimise research 
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:

  • You are passionate about AGI & proactive about learning and acquiring knowledge to enhance your domain knowledge
  • Experience partnering with Research leads on high impact, goal oriented, projects.
  • Delivery project management experience, enabling teams to hit hard deadlines.
  • Knowledge and expertise in project/program management with the skill to navigate through ambiguity and adjust and adapt plans and strategies as project conditions change    
  • Experience supporting teams to deliver projects
  • Experience in solving complex challenges, implementing scalable and sustainable solutions  
  • Knowledge and experience in utilising coaching techniques to support individuals from a diverse set of 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 supporting teams in fast-paced and constantly changing environments, acting as a sounding board as individuals go through the change cycle and supporting during challenging times 

In addition, the following would be an advantage but not required: 

  • Knowledge and familiarity with technical concepts such as information theory, mathematics, technical architectures, statistics, computer science, machine learning or reinforcement learning.