Technical Program Manager, AI Research

Captions is the leading video AI company, building the future of video creation. Over 10 million creators and businesses have used Captions to create videos for social media, marketing, sales, and more. We're on a mission to serve the next billion.

We are a rapidly growing team of ambitious, experienced, and devoted engineers, researchers, designers, marketers, and operators based in NYC. You'll join an early team and have an outsized impact on the product and the company's culture.

We’re very fortunate to have some the best investors and entrepreneurs backing us, including Index Ventures (Series C lead), Kleiner Perkins (Series B lead), Sequoia Capital (Series A and Seed co-lead), Andreessen Horowitz (Series A and Seed co-lead), Uncommon Projects, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, Lenny Rachitsky, Antoine Martin, Julie Zhuo, Ben Rubin, Jaren Glover, SVAngel, 20VC, Ludlow Ventures, Chapter One, and more.

Check out our latest financing milestone and some other coverage:

The Information: 50 Most Promising Startups

Fast Company: Next Big Things in Tech

The New York Times: When A.I. Bridged a Language Gap, They Fell in Love

Business Insider: 34 most promising AI startups

Time: The Best Inventions of 2024

** Please note that all of our roles will require you to be in-person at our NYC HQ (located in Union Square) **

About the Role:

Machine Learning research is critical to Captions’ business and the products we build for our users. We are investing heavily in this team and maintain an extremely high bar for joining it. We are looking for a Technical Program Manager to manage the complex projects across the team to ensure the delivery of its goals and objectives. 

Key Responsibilities:

• Oversee and manage complex machine learning (ML) projects across their entire lifecycle, from concept to deployment.

• Collaborate closely with ML research teams, product managers, and cross-functional stakeholders to align objectives and ensure project success.

• Facilitate communication and decision-making across teams to ensure research outcomes meet product and business needs.

• Ensure projects adhere to established timelines, research milestones, and delivery deadlines in the ML research cadence.

• Coordinate experiments, model training processes, and other ML-specific workflows to drive efficient research and development.

• Monitor and report on the progress of research and development efforts, identifying and addressing bottlenecks.

• Manage risk mitigation strategies for projects, particularly around model performance, scalability, and data issues.

• Support the team in prioritizing tasks, balancing short-term and long-term goals, and adapting to evolving research needs.

• Organize and lead meetings, presentations, and reviews to track project status and showcase key milestones.

• Foster collaboration between ML researchers, data scientists, software engineers, and other teams involved in developing ML solutions.

Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field.

• 5+ years of experience in technical program management, software engineering, systems engineering, or hardware engineering, ideally managing projects for machine learning or AI research teams.

• Strong understanding of machine learning concepts, model development processes, and ML research workflows.

• Experience with the lifecycle of ML projects, including model training, validation, deployment, and iteration.

• Proven ability to manage cross-functional teams in a research or technology-focused environment.

• Demonstrated experience in managing large-scale research projects with multiple stakeholders and dependencies.

• Strong organizational skills with a history of delivering results on time and within scope.

• Excellent communication and leadership abilities to work effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders.

• Familiarity with tools and platforms for ML development (e.g., Weights and Biases, TensorFlow, PyTorch, Jupyter Notebooks, ML Ops).

• Problem-solving mindset with the ability to navigate ambiguity and adapt to changing priorities.

Benefits:

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans

• 401K with employer match

• Commuter Benefits

• Catered lunch multiple days per week

• Dinner stipend every night if you're working late and want a bite!

• Doordash DashPass subscription

• Health & Wellness Perks (Talkspace, Kindbody, One Medical subscription, HealthAdvocate, Teladoc)

• Multiple team offsites per year with team events every month

• Generous PTO policy and flexible WFH days

Captions provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

Please note benefits apply to full time employees only.