Senior Technical Program Manager, Industrial AI & Automation
Top Benefits
About the role
About RLCore Technologies RLCore is building the adaptive optimization layer for industrial automation. Our reinforcement learning platform continuously optimizes industrial processes—improving efficiency, reducing energy and chemical consumption, and enabling better operational decisions in real time. The platform integrates with existing control systems, allowing industrial facilities to continuously learn and improve without replacing the infrastructure they already trust. Our technology is deployed in the water industry, with expansion underway into food & beverage, oil & gas, mining, chemicals, pulp & paper, data centers, and semiconductor manufacturing. Learn more at www.rlcore.ai.
The Opportunity We're looking for an experienced, technically fluent Senior Technical Program Manager to lead customer deployments of RLCore's adaptive optimization platform. This is not a traditional software TPM role. You'll manage complex, multidisciplinary deployments involving industrial control systems, AI software, operational technology (OT), engineering teams, system integrators, and customer stakeholders. You'll own customer programs end-to-end—from technical discovery and deployment planning through integration, commissioning, pilot execution, and transition to annual software subscriptions. You'll partner closely with Sales, Solutions, Engineering, Product, and company leadership to ensure deployments are delivered successfully, customer expectations are exceeded, and no critical detail falls through the cracks. Within your first year, you'll establish repeatable deployment processes, improve execution consistency across customer programs, shorten deployment timelines, and build the operational foundation required to scale RLCore across multiple industries. If you enjoy solving complex operational problems, working directly with customers, and turning ambitious projects into successful deployments, we'd love to talk.
Key Responsibilities Program Leadership & Delivery Own end-to-end execution across multiple customer deployments, ensuring projects remain on schedule, within scope, and aligned with customer objectives. Develop and manage integrated program plans, milestones, risks, dependencies, and action registers across customers and internal teams. Proactively identify risks, remove blockers, drive decisions, and ensure no customer commitment or critical workstream is overlooked. Lead commissioning, pilot execution, customer acceptance, and transition into production operations. Technical Deployment & Integration Lead the technical deployment workstream, partnering with customer IT, OT, cybersecurity, controls, and operations teams to prepare sites for successful deployments. Drive deployment architecture decisions, including on-premises, virtual machine, edge, and cloud environments based on customer requirements. Coordinate server provisioning, networking, remote access, firewall approvals, cybersecurity requirements, and infrastructure readiness. Work with customer automation teams to establish connectivity through OPC UA and other industrial communication protocols. Partner with Engineering and Solutions to resolve technical integration challenges and ensure sites are deployment-ready before commissioning. Develop repeatable integration standards, deployment checklists, and technical playbooks that improve scalability across future deployments. Customer Engagement Serve as the primary operational point of contact throughout customer deployments. Lead customer meetings, executive status reviews, technical workshops, and cross-functional working sessions. Build trusted relationships with engineering, operations, controls, IT, OT, and executive stakeholders. Participate in customer discovery, technical sales discussions, and solution planning to ensure successful execution from pre-sales through production. Cross-Functional Leadership Partner closely with Solutions, Engineering, Product, Sales, and Leadership to coordinate successful customer deployments. Ensure customer priorities, technical execution, commercial milestones, and business objectives remain aligned throughout every engagement. Drive accountability across internal teams while maintaining clear ownership, communication, and decision-making. Commercial Success Partner with Sales and Solutions to successfully transition customers from pilot projects into long-term software subscriptions. Track commercial milestones alongside technical milestones, ensuring customer value is demonstrated throughout the engagement. Support customer expansion planning by coordinating additional optimization opportunities and future deployment phases. Deployment Excellence Develop and continuously improve deployment playbooks, implementation methodologies, onboarding processes, communication standards, and governance practices. Standardize deployment workflows, documentation, and customer communications to improve consistency and scalability. Measure deployment performance, identify opportunities to reduce implementation effort, and continuously improve customer time-to-value. Continuous Improvement Partner closely with Product to ensure customer feedback, deployment challenges, and operational learnings become scalable product capabilities rather than one-off solutions. Work with Engineering and Solutions to improve deployment tooling, automation, monitoring, and operational efficiency. Lead post-deployment retrospectives and establish best practices that continuously improve future customer implementations.
Required Qualifications 10+ years of experience leading complex technical programs, enterprise software implementations, or industrial technology deployments. Proven track record managing multiple concurrent customer programs involving engineering, operations, IT, OT, system integrators, and executive stakeholders. Strong understanding of industrial deployment architectures, including on-premises, virtual machines, edge computing, cloud infrastructure, networking, remote access, cybersecurity, and enterprise IT environments. Experience working with industrial automation platforms, SCADA, DCS, PLCs, OPC UA, industrial networking, and operational technology (OT). Excellent program management skills, including planning, scheduling, risk management, stakeholder communication, issue resolution, and executive reporting. Strong technical aptitude with the ability to work comfortably across software, controls engineering, networking, infrastructure, and industrial operations. Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence both technical and executive stakeholders. Bachelor's or Master's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical discipline. Nice to Have Experience deploying AI, machine learning, optimization, or industrial software platforms. Experience commissioning industrial automation systems or enterprise software in operational environments. Experience working in industrial water, municipal water, food & beverage, oil &gas, petrochemicals, mining, pulp & paper, semiconductor manufacturing, chemical processing, or data centers. PMP or equivalent program management experience.
Why Join RLCore Help Define a New Category: Join early and help build the operational engine behind the adaptive optimization layer for industrial automation. Lead Mission-Critical Deployments: Deliver AI systems that optimize critical industrial infrastructure, creating measurable operational and sustainability outcomes for customers. Build Technology That Matters: Work on real-world AI systems that continuously optimize critical industrial infrastructure—improving efficiency, reducing energy and chemical consumption, and helping essential industries operate more sustainably. Own Meaningful Outcomes: Your leadership will directly influence customer success, recurring revenue, deployment scalability, and RLCore's expansion into new industries. Collaborate with World-Class Talent: Work alongside experts in reinforcement learning, industrial automation, controls engineering, and applied AI in a highly collaborative, fast-moving environment.
Competitive Compensation & Equity: We offer a competitive salary, meaningful equity participation, comprehensive health benefits, flexible vacation, and the flexibility of a remote-first team.
About RL Core Technologies
RL Core leverages world class machine learning expertise to optimize industrial control systems. We are experts in reinforcement learning--a technique that can automatically adapt process controls, replacing individual static set points with system-wide, real-time adjustments learned from historical data and live observations. Unlike other AI approaches that seek to mimic humans, our RL agents carefully and continually improves systems to levels beyond what a human expert could achieve alone. Our techniques can deliver improved efficiency, lower maintenance, increased automation–generally lower costs and better performance across the board.
Similar Jobs
Senior Technical Program Manager, Industrial AI & Automation
Top Benefits
About the role
About RLCore Technologies RLCore is building the adaptive optimization layer for industrial automation. Our reinforcement learning platform continuously optimizes industrial processes—improving efficiency, reducing energy and chemical consumption, and enabling better operational decisions in real time. The platform integrates with existing control systems, allowing industrial facilities to continuously learn and improve without replacing the infrastructure they already trust. Our technology is deployed in the water industry, with expansion underway into food & beverage, oil & gas, mining, chemicals, pulp & paper, data centers, and semiconductor manufacturing. Learn more at www.rlcore.ai.
The Opportunity We're looking for an experienced, technically fluent Senior Technical Program Manager to lead customer deployments of RLCore's adaptive optimization platform. This is not a traditional software TPM role. You'll manage complex, multidisciplinary deployments involving industrial control systems, AI software, operational technology (OT), engineering teams, system integrators, and customer stakeholders. You'll own customer programs end-to-end—from technical discovery and deployment planning through integration, commissioning, pilot execution, and transition to annual software subscriptions. You'll partner closely with Sales, Solutions, Engineering, Product, and company leadership to ensure deployments are delivered successfully, customer expectations are exceeded, and no critical detail falls through the cracks. Within your first year, you'll establish repeatable deployment processes, improve execution consistency across customer programs, shorten deployment timelines, and build the operational foundation required to scale RLCore across multiple industries. If you enjoy solving complex operational problems, working directly with customers, and turning ambitious projects into successful deployments, we'd love to talk.
Key Responsibilities Program Leadership & Delivery Own end-to-end execution across multiple customer deployments, ensuring projects remain on schedule, within scope, and aligned with customer objectives. Develop and manage integrated program plans, milestones, risks, dependencies, and action registers across customers and internal teams. Proactively identify risks, remove blockers, drive decisions, and ensure no customer commitment or critical workstream is overlooked. Lead commissioning, pilot execution, customer acceptance, and transition into production operations. Technical Deployment & Integration Lead the technical deployment workstream, partnering with customer IT, OT, cybersecurity, controls, and operations teams to prepare sites for successful deployments. Drive deployment architecture decisions, including on-premises, virtual machine, edge, and cloud environments based on customer requirements. Coordinate server provisioning, networking, remote access, firewall approvals, cybersecurity requirements, and infrastructure readiness. Work with customer automation teams to establish connectivity through OPC UA and other industrial communication protocols. Partner with Engineering and Solutions to resolve technical integration challenges and ensure sites are deployment-ready before commissioning. Develop repeatable integration standards, deployment checklists, and technical playbooks that improve scalability across future deployments. Customer Engagement Serve as the primary operational point of contact throughout customer deployments. Lead customer meetings, executive status reviews, technical workshops, and cross-functional working sessions. Build trusted relationships with engineering, operations, controls, IT, OT, and executive stakeholders. Participate in customer discovery, technical sales discussions, and solution planning to ensure successful execution from pre-sales through production. Cross-Functional Leadership Partner closely with Solutions, Engineering, Product, Sales, and Leadership to coordinate successful customer deployments. Ensure customer priorities, technical execution, commercial milestones, and business objectives remain aligned throughout every engagement. Drive accountability across internal teams while maintaining clear ownership, communication, and decision-making. Commercial Success Partner with Sales and Solutions to successfully transition customers from pilot projects into long-term software subscriptions. Track commercial milestones alongside technical milestones, ensuring customer value is demonstrated throughout the engagement. Support customer expansion planning by coordinating additional optimization opportunities and future deployment phases. Deployment Excellence Develop and continuously improve deployment playbooks, implementation methodologies, onboarding processes, communication standards, and governance practices. Standardize deployment workflows, documentation, and customer communications to improve consistency and scalability. Measure deployment performance, identify opportunities to reduce implementation effort, and continuously improve customer time-to-value. Continuous Improvement Partner closely with Product to ensure customer feedback, deployment challenges, and operational learnings become scalable product capabilities rather than one-off solutions. Work with Engineering and Solutions to improve deployment tooling, automation, monitoring, and operational efficiency. Lead post-deployment retrospectives and establish best practices that continuously improve future customer implementations.
Required Qualifications 10+ years of experience leading complex technical programs, enterprise software implementations, or industrial technology deployments. Proven track record managing multiple concurrent customer programs involving engineering, operations, IT, OT, system integrators, and executive stakeholders. Strong understanding of industrial deployment architectures, including on-premises, virtual machines, edge computing, cloud infrastructure, networking, remote access, cybersecurity, and enterprise IT environments. Experience working with industrial automation platforms, SCADA, DCS, PLCs, OPC UA, industrial networking, and operational technology (OT). Excellent program management skills, including planning, scheduling, risk management, stakeholder communication, issue resolution, and executive reporting. Strong technical aptitude with the ability to work comfortably across software, controls engineering, networking, infrastructure, and industrial operations. Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence both technical and executive stakeholders. Bachelor's or Master's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical discipline. Nice to Have Experience deploying AI, machine learning, optimization, or industrial software platforms. Experience commissioning industrial automation systems or enterprise software in operational environments. Experience working in industrial water, municipal water, food & beverage, oil &gas, petrochemicals, mining, pulp & paper, semiconductor manufacturing, chemical processing, or data centers. PMP or equivalent program management experience.
Why Join RLCore Help Define a New Category: Join early and help build the operational engine behind the adaptive optimization layer for industrial automation. Lead Mission-Critical Deployments: Deliver AI systems that optimize critical industrial infrastructure, creating measurable operational and sustainability outcomes for customers. Build Technology That Matters: Work on real-world AI systems that continuously optimize critical industrial infrastructure—improving efficiency, reducing energy and chemical consumption, and helping essential industries operate more sustainably. Own Meaningful Outcomes: Your leadership will directly influence customer success, recurring revenue, deployment scalability, and RLCore's expansion into new industries. Collaborate with World-Class Talent: Work alongside experts in reinforcement learning, industrial automation, controls engineering, and applied AI in a highly collaborative, fast-moving environment.
Competitive Compensation & Equity: We offer a competitive salary, meaningful equity participation, comprehensive health benefits, flexible vacation, and the flexibility of a remote-first team.
About RL Core Technologies
RL Core leverages world class machine learning expertise to optimize industrial control systems. We are experts in reinforcement learning--a technique that can automatically adapt process controls, replacing individual static set points with system-wide, real-time adjustments learned from historical data and live observations. Unlike other AI approaches that seek to mimic humans, our RL agents carefully and continually improves systems to levels beyond what a human expert could achieve alone. Our techniques can deliver improved efficiency, lower maintenance, increased automation–generally lower costs and better performance across the board.