Program Director

AI Program Manager

Aptive Resources is seeking an AI Program Manager with at least fifteen years of experience across diverse IT projects, both large and small, and the ability to manage a portfolio of projects. In this role you will lead Aptive's delivery team supporting the Veterans Health Administration's National Artificial Intelligence Institute developing the operating model that lets AI work scale beyond a handful of central projects, designing the field operations structure that helps front-line clinicians become AI adopters, and reporting program outcomes to senior VHA leadership. This senior level, full-time position is remote. This is a contingent hire position.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Provide technical program leadership for the contractor team across all six workstreams, aligning AI inventory, risk management, oversight, strategy, and field operations delivery to a single operating model.
• Develop the AI center of excellence operational playbook, including the staffing model and supporting standard operating procedures.
• Document and recommend distributed VHA AI innovation and governance processes so that AI work can be executed outside the central Institute without loss of oversight.
• Develop and recommend the operational structure and support model for field partnership pilots, including five field-based pilot AI project development teams.
• Lead the team's support to VHA business units in creating and updating their AI innovation and governance strategies, covering at least five business units.
• Develop AI entrepreneur and adopter playbooks covering internal development pathways and vendor evaluation.
• Design and lead the qualitative and quantitative assessment of pilot outcomes and of program implementation.
• Manage the program to cost, schedule, and performance, and identify and mitigate risks to the program.
• Serve as the contractor's senior escalation point to government leadership on delivery status, resourcing, and risk.
• Develop additional programming for the VHA AI Assessment Subcommittee, field AI committees, and other centralized governance entities, including trainings and summits.
• Support administrative operations, planning, and content development for a monthly meeting cadence across at least two AI oversight committees and one workgroup.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Years of experience: 15 years minimum of program management experience across diverse IT projects, both large and small. Preferred: ten or more of those years in healthcare and five or more leading artificial intelligence, data science, or emerging-technology programs.
• Required experience: Experience with diverse IT projects, including AI-related, both large and small, and the ability to manage a portfolio of projects. Well versed in the full systems development life cycle, enterprise-wide network engineering, strategic information planning, business process reengineering, and structure and management practices. Able to identify and mitigate risks to the program and to manage to cost, schedule, and performance. Experience with and demonstrated understanding of SAFe's Lean Agile principles and practices to drive value and sustain organizational change and operational excellence through the empowering of high-performing Agile teams.
• Degree: Master's degree in Health Administration, Public Health, Data Science, Informatics, Business, or a related field.
• Licensure/certifications: None required. Project Management Professional (PMP) certification or equivalent, SAFe Agilist or SAFe Program Consultant certification, and Prosci change management certification preferred.
• Work location: Work is performed at the contractor's site and no travel is anticipated.
• Clearance: None required. Must be able to obtain and maintain a favorably adjudicated Tier 1 / National Agency Check with Written Inquiries (NACI) background investigation in accordance with VA Handbook 0710. Must complete VA Privacy and Information Security Awareness and Rules of Behavior training (TMS #10176) prior to system access and annually thereafter.
• Citizenship: Must be authorized to work in the United States. All work must be performed within a jurisdiction subject to the law of the United States or its territories.

Desired Qualifications:

• Demonstrated success standing up an AI center of excellence, innovation pipeline, or comparable operating model inside a large organization.
• Command of the full systems development life cycle, strategic information planning, and business process reengineering in an enterprise IT environment.
• Demonstrated understanding of SAFe Lean-Agile principles and practices, and experience empowering high-performing Agile teams through organizational change.
• Enterprise-wide network engineering familiarity sufficient to reason about infrastructure constraints on AI deployment.
• VHA, VISN, or comparable large integrated health system program experience.
• Experience managing a portfolio of field-based pilots and converting pilot results into scaling decisions.
• Strong qualitative and quantitative program evaluation capability.
• Change management experience in a large, distributed, and unionized workforce environment.
• Executive presence and the ability to brief senior government leadership on technical program status and risk.
• Ability to get up to speed quickly on complex issues; desire to work in a fast-paced, rapidly evolving environment.
• Capable self-starter with a drive to get all types of work done and high attention to detail.
• Outstanding written and verbal communications skills.
• Knowledge of military and Veteran populations.

Client Information:

The National Artificial Intelligence Institute sits within the Digital Health Office of the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). Its mission is to improve the health and well-being of Veterans and to empower the VHA workforce by harnessing the potential of trustworthy AI solutions and emerging technologies. The Institute identifies and matures AI use cases, pursues and tests solutions for prioritized use cases, plans and conducts pilots, evaluates the effectiveness and value of those solutions, and supports enterprise adoption and scaling decisions. It also carries VHA's responsibilities for federal AI transparency and oversight, working in collaboration with VA's Chief AI Office. More information is available at

About Aptive:

Aptive partners with federal agencies to achieve their missions through improved performance, streamlined operations and enhanced service delivery. Based in Alexandria, Virginia, we support more than a dozen agencies including Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Defense, Homeland Security and the National Science Foundation. We specialize in applying technology, creativity and human-centered services to optimize mission delivery and improve experiences for millions of people who count on government services every day. Founded: 2012. Employees: 300+ nationwide.

EEO Statement:

Aptive is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, parental status, veteran status, age, disability, or any other protected class. Veterans, members of the Reserve and National Guard, and transitioning active-duty service members are highly encouraged to apply.