Program Manager, Science & Strategic Initiatives

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.

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 will provide hands on Program Management Support for a number (1-3) of effort teams within the Science and Strategic Initiatives Unit.
Agility and flexibility will be a key capability but the efforts will likely, at most times, be focused in the Physics and Chemistry space, including our Materials team (see here for an example of their outputs).
There will also be the opportunity to support Unit wide activities.

• 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.
• Directly apply your technical background and acquired knowledge of your effort domains to inform effort strategy and help navigate delivery.
• Work with leadership, the team, and partners to translate the research outcomes into Commercial, Societal and Reputational impact. This could take the form of products, demos, publications, external partnerships and more.
• 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.

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 using AI to have transformative impact & proactive about learning and acquiring knowledge to enhance your domain knowledge
• Experience partnering with Research, Engineering and/or Product leads on high impact, goal oriented, projects in Scientific domains.
• Delivery project management experience, enabling teams to translate research into impact (products, partnerships, publications etc).
• 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 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: 

• Education background, to at least undergraduate level, in Physics, Chemistry, Materials Science, and/or a related field.
• Knowledge and familiarity with technical concepts such as solid state physics, materials synthesis and discovery or manufacturing, chemistry, deep learning.
• Experience with commercialization of materials or chemicals innovation.

Note: In the event your application is successful and an offer of employment is made to you, any offer of employment will be conditional on the results of a background check, performed by a third party acting on our behalf. For more information on how we handle your data, please see our Applicant and Candidate Privacy Policy.

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.