AI Program Manager (Product Development)

Overview

As a Program Manager at Northern Trust, you lead the delivery of complex programmes spanning multiple projects and workstreams. You will shape governance, roadmaps, and performance dashboards to ensure value delivery for strategic initiatives, including AI, automation, and emerging technologies. Collaborating with business, product, technology, and risk teams, you drive alignment, risk management, and benefits realization in a regulated financial services environment. This role offers exposure to high-impact programmes and opportunities to scale governance and operating models across the organization.

Pay / Benefits

• flexible and collaborative work culture
• inclusive workplace
• philanthropy involvement
• strong financial stability
• opportunity to work on high-impact programmes

Responsibilities

• Establish programme structure, governance and delivery cadence
• Translate strategy into integrated roadmap and plans
• Define scope, milestones, roles, governance, and escalation routes
• Coordinate stakeholders across business, product, technology, operations, risk
• Manage programme scope, milestones, dependencies, resources, costs, risks and decisions
• Coordinate opportunity assessment, prioritisation and mobilisation
• Integrate requirements, solution delivery, controls, testing and readiness into the plan
• Coordinate pilot design, adoption and value-measurement activities
• Monitor progress against outcomes and gates
• Resolve cross-project conflicts and delivery constraints
• Escalate material risks and resource gaps
• Prepare executive updates, governance materials and decision papers
• Facilitate programme, steering and decision-making forums
• Manage scope changes and assess impacts on outcomes, schedule, cost and risk
• Maintain records of decisions, approvals and delivery evidence
• Coordinate hand-offs and transition to sustainable ownership
• Support benefit tracking and lessons learned
• Use AI-enabled tools to improve planning, analysis and reporting while maintaining human accountability
• Scope and accountability: leads complex programme with multiple projects; autonomous within strategic objectives; coordinates across functions; accountable for visibility of outcomes, risks and decisions
• Develops options and recommendations for material trade-offs; ensures governance and decisions are escalated appropriately
• Supports sponsors and governance forums in timely, evidence-based decisions
• No formal people-management responsibility unless assigned
• Does not own underlying business, product or technology functions

Key requirements

• Strong programme-management experience across complex, cross-functional initiatives
• Experience leading programmes comprising multiple projects or workstreams
• Integrated-planning, governance and dependency-management capability
• Experience managing programme risks, resources, costs, forecasts and executive reporting
• Ability to translate strategic objectives into executable roadmaps and delivery plans
• Identify critical dependencies, constraints and cross-project impacts
• Senior-stakeholder management, facilitation and influencing skills
• Ability to develop and present evidence-based options and recommendations
• Experience supporting governance forums and executive decision-making
• Working understanding of requirements, testing, controls, implementation and operational readiness
• Knowledge of Agile, Waterfall and hybrid delivery methods
• Experience in financial services or regulated industry desirable
• Exposure to artificial intelligence, automation, data, digital or emerging-technology programmes desirable
• Specialist technical AI expertise not required
• Relevant degree or equivalent professional experience
• Programme or project-management qualification (PMP, MSP, PRINCE2 or Agile) advantageous
• Experience using programme-planning, reporting and delivery-management tools advantageous
• Demonstrated experience establishing and scaling enterprise AI programs is preferred

• Strong stakeholder management
• Facilitation and influencing
• Decision-making under uncertainty
• Agile
• Waterfall
• hybrid delivery methods

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