Program Manager

We are looking for a leader to own the delivery and ongoing service performance of a program or service portfolio — coordinating cross-functional teams, managing risk and dependencies, and ensuring committed outcomes and SLAs are met. This is a senior-management role that balances program planning and governance with day-to-day service management. Unlike a project owner focused on a single output, this leader thinks bigger: aligning initiatives to business strategy, managing interdependencies, and ensuring the sum of the projects creates transformative organizational value. On the service side, the mandate is to realize consistent delivery against every commitment made to the client or to internal teams, translating operational delivery into business outcomes.

The defining shift for this seat in 2026 is applying AI to surface delivery risk earlier and automate routine service work, with governance and human oversight intact. AI tooling is automating repetitive coordination and enabling predictive analytics that can flag potential delays before they occur, freeing the leader to focus on strategy and decisions. In service management specifically, AI models are being used to prevent SLA breaches by anticipating response delays, resolution bottlenecks, and capacity overload before they hit.

The value this person brings is dependable delivery and service performance — predictable outcomes, controlled risk, and satisfied stakeholders — increasingly augmented by AI-driven insight while keeping accountability and judgment human.

We are seeking a dependable delivery / service leader who keeps complex programs on track and communicates clearly with clients and teams. They are organized, calm under pressure, and proactive about risk. On the service side, they proactively manage customer health, foster executive relationships, and ensure customers realize maximum value from the engagement. Where AI enters delivery, they drive the end-to-end operational execution of solutions — turning strategic intent into production-ready assets rather than stalled experiments.

This is a senior-management profile that partners across delivery teams, PMO, clients, vendors, and support/ops. It suits someone open to a hybrid engagement with delivery-site presence, and to mobilization to the Middle East, Europe, or North America depending on the client. The person we want manages expectations well and balances governance with pragmatism.

A strong candidate for this role has run programs and/or services to committed outcomes — someone who has managed scope, risk, and dependencies, handled SLA pressure, and kept stakeholders aligned through difficult moments. They have defended a service against a breach, recovered a slipping program, and managed a difficult client relationship back to health. They bring an openness to using AI for earlier risk visibility and routine automation, with oversight kept human.

In practice, the responsibilities break down as follows:

• Program delivery: Plan and govern program delivery; manage scope, schedule, budget, risk, and dependencies; align initiatives to strategy and manage the interdependencies between projects so the program delivers value as a whole.
• Service management: Own service performance, SLAs, billing, governance, and continual improvement; manage incidents and problems; keep customer health visible and act on it.
• Stakeholder & vendor governance: Manage client, vendor, and internal stakeholder relationships and reporting; foster executive relationships and manage expectations.
• Risk & SLA protection: Use predictive insight to flag delays and prevent SLA breaches before they occur — anticipating response delays, resolution bottlenecks, and capacity overload.
• AI-augmented delivery / service: Apply agentic AI / AIOps to summarize status, surface risk earlier, and automate routine coordination and service tasks, keeping humans accountable for judgment.

We want to see a delivery leader fluent in program and service management who understands the technology enough to govern it, and who is curious about applying AI to delivery insight and routine service work — with oversight kept human. The strongest candidates can drive the operational execution of AI solutions themselves, moving them from strategic intent to production-ready enterprise assets.

Core delivery & service

• Program / project management (Agile and Waterfall); risk, dependency, and stakeholder management.
• ITSM / service management, SLA governance, incident and problem management.
• Budget, billing, reporting, and continual improvement.

Delivery / service performance (KPIs from research)

• Steers on-time / on-budget delivery, SLA attainment, risk burn-down, service billing/governance health, and customer satisfaction.
• Uses predictive indicators to get ahead of SLA breaches and capacity risk rather than reacting after the fact.

Modern Agentic AI / AIOps (niche areas we are seeking — depth explored at interview)

• Agents that summarize delivery status, flag risk, and automate routine coordination, freeing the leader for strategy and decisions.

This role is delivered through Solutions Chapter Group's Human Resources chapter (Chapter 12) as a Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) engagement, under our Executive Search stream. Rather than a "post-and-pray" marketplace approach, we use a Curated Professional Recruitment model: candidate profiles are pre-vetted in our internal database, and when a required profile isn't already available, our dedicated Scout network conducts global headhunting to secure it. We screen and match candidates against each client's specific requirements, and placements may be remote or an on-site deployment with mobilization to the Middle East, Europe, or the United States.

From a recruitment-fit perspective, we screen for:

• Dependable, organized, calm under delivery pressure.
• Strong stakeholder communication and expectation management.
• Proactive risk identification and mitigation.
• A balance of governance and pragmatism.
• Openness to the engagement model (remote or mobilized on-site) and readiness for cross-region deployment.

Areas to explore at interview *(topics only)*

• Keeping a program on track through interdependencies
• Handling an SLA breach

Program & service delivery management, risk/dependency/SLA governance, stakeholder & vendor management, budget & reporting