Software Technical Program Manager in Bristol

Axelera AI is not your regular deep-tech startup. We are creating the next-generation AI platform to support anyone who wants to help advancing humanity and improve the world around us. In just four years, we have raised a total of $370 million and have built a world-class team of 220+ employees (including 49+ PhDs with more than 40,000 citations), both remotely from 19 different countries and with offices in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Italy, the UK, headquartered at the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, Netherlands. We have also launched our Metis AI Platform, which achieves a 3-5x increase in efficiency and performance, and have visibility into a strong business pipeline exceeding $100 million. Our unwavering commitment to innovation has firmly established us as a global industry pioneer. Are you up for the challenge?

We are looking for a Software Technical PM to own the day-to-day planning, execution management, and coordination of complex software development projects at Axelera AI. Working across multiple software sub-teams (Runtime, ML, Compiler, Backend, SWD, Apps), the Software Technical PM is responsible for turning high-level project objectives into detailed execution plans, ensuring every task and dependency has a named technical owner, driving those plans through to delivery, and proactively surfacing cross-team risks and roadblocks so that the right people can resolve them. This is a hands-on execution management role, not a reporting role and not a technical leadership role.

The core of the work is building plans with engineers, tracking progress at the task level, running integration and coordination cadences, ensuring technical ownership is assigned and visible, making informed trade-off recommendations, and ensuring that cross-team dependencies are managed. Technical decisions and technical problem-solving remain with engineering. Status reporting and dashboards are outputs of the management activity. The Software Technical PM works as part of the programme management team. Project assignments are determined by programme complexity and risk, with the initial focus on LLM/generative AI enablement for Voyager SDK.

Key responsibilities:

• End-to-end execution management of assigned complex software projects from planning through delivery, working across multiple software sub-teams simultaneously.
• Build and maintain detailed project plans at the task and dependency level, working directly with engineering sub-team leads to establish realistic estimates, identify dependencies, and define integration milestones.
• Ensure every task has a named technical owner.
• Drive the planning and coordination of the integration process for assigned projects: work with engineering leads to define the integration strategy, identify who owns the shared integration environment, ensure integration milestones are agreed and tracked, and escalate when integration tasks lack clear technical ownership or are falling behind.
• Ensure explicit definition-of-done criteria are established for each project phase (functional correctness gate, performance gate, release readiness).
• Drive the process to get engineering and product stakeholders to agree these criteria before work begins.
• Track progress against agreed criteria rather than informal assumptions.
• Run daily or appropriate cadence coordination standups for assigned projects, ensuring status is communicated publicly, blockers are identified within 24 hours, and ownership of resolution is assigned to a named engineer and tracked to completion.
• Track estimation accuracy and delivery predictability at the task level.
• Identify patterns of optimistic estimation early, make them visible to teams and leadership, and work with engineering leads to adopt more realistic estimation practices.
• Identify single-person critical path dependencies and escalate to engineering leads to establish backup coverage on critical path components.
• Prepare and maintain project-level status views, risk registers, and decision logs that give programme leadership an accurate, real-time picture of project health.
• Contribute to programme-level process improvements based on lessons learned from project execution, including estimation calibration, integration planning practices, and cross-team communication standards.
• Work with the Software Program Manager to ensure assigned project plans are aligned with the overall release roadmap, PI planning cycle, and portfolio priorities.

Qualifications:

• 3-5 years of experience in technical programme or project management within a software-intensive technology organisation, preferably in semiconductor toolchains, compilers, AI/ML frameworks, or embedded systems software.
• Demonstrated experience coordinating cross-team software integration efforts involving multiple codebases, build systems, and testing environments converging on a single deliverable.
• Experience driving accountability for integration tasks across teams without owning the technical implementation.
• Sufficient technical literacy to navigate discussions about compiler toolchains, runtime systems, model optimisation, and inference pipelines: able to understand what teams are doing, ask probing questions, and recognise when estimates or status updates do not add up.
• This is not a role that requires writing code, but it requires understanding the engineering landscape well enough to manage it effectively.
• Track record of improving delivery predictability on complex software projects, including experience with estimation calibration, phased integration planning, or similar disciplines.
• Experience working in a matrixed environment, managing by influence across teams without direct line authority.
• Ability to build trust with senior engineers and drive accountability through transparency and structured process rather than hierarchy.
• Familiarity with AI/ML model deployment pipelines (model training to quantisation to compilation to inference) is a significant advantage, particularly for LLM/generative AI workloads.
• Familiarity with agile or SAFe-inspired planning methodologies, including PI planning, sprint/iteration management, and backlog refinement.
• Outstanding verbal and written communication skills in English, with the ability to translate complex technical status into clear, decision-enabling summaries for engineering and executive audiences.
• Strong attention to detail, particularly in tracking task-level dependencies, identifying estimation drift, and maintaining accurate project records.
• Ability to work independently with a high degree of autonomy in a fast-paced environment, proactively identifying issues and driving resolution without waiting for escalation.

Location:

We offer a flexible working arrangement, with options to:

• Work from one of our Axelera AI offices (Leuven in Belgium, Amsterdam and Eindhoven in the Netherlands, Zurich in Switzerland, Florence and Milan in Italy or Bristol in the United Kingdom) if you are already based in the vicinity.
• Work fully remotely from any European country (incl. the UK) you are already in.
• Relocate with us and work from Italy (Florence or Milan) or the Netherlands (Amsterdam or Eindhoven).

Kindly note that priority will be given to candidates who are interested in being based in Belgium, Germany or Italy.

What We Offer:

This is your chance to shape and be part of a dynamic, fast-growing, international organization. We offer an attractive compensation package, including a pension plan, extensive employee insurances and the option to get company shares. An open culture that supports creativity and continual innovation is awaiting you. Collaborative ownership and freedom with responsibility is characteristic for the way we act and work as a team. At Axelera AI, we wholeheartedly embrace equal opportunity and hold diversity in the highest regard. Our steadfast commitment is to cultivate a warm and inclusive environment that empowers and celebrates every member of our team. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds to join us in shaping the future of AI.