AI Program Lead

Job Description
Job Description – AI Project Lead

Location: 8 Nelson St W, Brampton, ON (5 days/week, in-office)
Employment Type: Full-Time, Permanent
Reports to: CEO

Salary: 120,000 - 140,000

Company Overview

BHive is a newly established business incubation and innovation company based in Brampton, Ontario. We help entrepreneurs, startups, and small and medium-sized businesses adopt new technologies, strengthen their operations, and turn growth opportunities into measurable results. BHive combines practical programming, expert support, ecosystem connections, and implementation-focused services to help businesses move from ideas to execution. Please visit www.thebhive.ca to learn more.

About BNext

BNext AI is the company's AI enablement program for small and medium-sized businesses. It helps participating companies move from interest in artificial intelligence to structured, practical implementation. The goal is not simply to deliver workshops; it is to help businesses identify meaningful use cases, build credible implementation plans, access the right expertise, and demonstrate measurable business outcomes.

The program operates as one connected participant journey:

Discover - awareness sessions, business seminars, outreach, intake, and enrolment that bring the right businesses into the program.

Define - clear business cases, implementation roadmaps, success measures, and priorities for each participating business.

Deliver - coordinated curriculum, technical expertise, vendors, and cross-functional support that move approved plans into action.

Demonstrate - participant engagement, implementation progress, outcomes, and impact reporting for leadership and funding stakeholders.

The AI Program Lead builds and runs the operating engine that keeps this journey connected, accountable, and focused on outcomes.

Who You Are

You turn ambiguity into execution. You are a senior program operator who can take a broad mandate, establish the operating model, and keep multiple teams and partners moving toward the same outcome. You are equally comfortable building a delivery plan, challenging an overdue owner, resolving a participant issue, reviewing a budget, and briefing an executive or government stakeholder. You do not need to personally teach every workshop or build every AI solution. You need to ensure the right people, decisions, milestones, controls, and evidence are in place so the program delivers consistently.

Position Summary

We are seeking an AI Program Lead to own the end-to-end operating model and delivery of BNext’s AI Enablement Program. This role is the central orchestration point across participant delivery, internal teams, external partners, vendors, technical experts, budgets, risk management, and impact reporting. The successful candidate will translate program objectives into structured, time-bound execution and ensure participating businesses receive a consistent, high-quality experience from intake through post-program reporting.

Reporting to the CEO, this role will:

• translate program strategy and funding commitments into clear workplans, milestones, owners, dependencies, and decision points.
  

• coordinate marketing, sales, curriculum, technical delivery, operations, vendors, and partners as one connected delivery team.
  

• protect cohort outcomes and participant experience by identifying risks early, resolving blockers, and escalating material issues with clear recommendations.
  

• build the repeatable systems, tools, and operating rhythms required to deliver the program efficiently and at scale.
  

• maintain fiscal, operational, and reporting discipline across program budgets, resources, vendors, performance data, and funder requirements.
  

Key Responsibilities

Program Operating Model & Delivery

• Own end-to-end delivery from awareness and enrolment through implementation support and post-program impact reporting, with minimal day-to-day oversight.
  

• Convert strategic direction and partner commitments into an integrated delivery plan with clear milestones, owners, dependencies, service standards, and escalation paths.
  

• Establish and run the operating cadence for the program, including planning, status reviews, decision tracking, risk reviews, and executive updates.
  

• Build and continuously improve the delivery frameworks, workflows, templates, and controls that make the program repeatable and scalable.
  

Participant Journey & Implementation

• Serve as the senior point of contact for participating businesses, providing clear guidance, issue resolution, and escalation management throughout the engagement.
  

• Facilitate awareness sessions, business seminars, enrolment activities, stakeholder meetings, and program updates; curriculum design and workshop delivery are led separately by the Curriculum Lead.
  

• Review and strengthen participant business cases, implementation roadmaps, KPI definitions, and outcome measures so each engagement is practical and decision-ready.
  

• Monitor participation, delivery progress, risks, and business outcomes, intervening early where engagement or implementation is off track.
  

Partners, Vendors & Stakeholders

- Manage relationships with external partners, subject matter experts, vendors, technical contributors, and ecosystem stakeholders, holding each accountable to agreed deliverables and program standards.

- Clarify scopes, handoffs, service expectations, timelines, and acceptance criteria across internal and external contributors.

- Resolve routine delivery trade-offs directly and elevate only material decisions, with clear context, options, and a recommended path forward.

- Represent the program credibly with senior business leaders, board members, municipal and provincial funders, and ecosystem partners.

Systems, Data & Reporting

- Maintain a reliable single view of cohort status, participant progress, owners, deadlines, risks, decisions, budgets, and outcomes.

- Use CRM and program-management tools, including Zoho where applicable, to maintain clean records, support handoffs, and create visibility across the participant journey.

- Define and monitor the metrics that matter, including enrollment, engagement, milestone completion, implementation progress, participant outcomes, and program impact.

- Synthesize operational and performance data into clear executive, board, and funder reporting that supports decisions and demonstrates accountability.

Budget, Risk & Cross-Functional Leadership

- Oversee program budgets, resource allocation, vendor coordination, and operating costs, maintaining fiscal accountability and value for money.

- Maintain an active risk register and proactively address capacity constraints, delivery gaps, partner dependencies, quality concerns, and participant issues before they affect outcomes.

- Coordinate cross-functional contributors across marketing, sales, curriculum, technical delivery, partnerships, finance, and operations, ensuring decisions and deadlines remain aligned.

- Model strong ownership, sound judgment, and calm execution in a fast-moving environment where information and priorities may change.

What Success Looks Like in Year One

We'll define clear OKRs with you before you start, so you always know where you're driving. Broadly, success looks like:

The program runs as one operating system. There is a clear, current view of the participant journey, owners, deadlines, dependencies, risks, budgets, decisions, and outcomes across every cohort.

Cohorts move through delivery consistently. Participants receive a structured experience from intake through implementation and impact reporting, with clear handoffs, service standards, and timely issue resolution.

Risks are managed before they become failures. Blockers are surfaced early, owners are held accountable, and material decisions reach leadership with clear options and recommendations.

Impact is visible and defensible. Participant business cases, roadmaps, KPIs, implementation progress, and outcomes are documented well enough to support executive decisions, board oversight, and government-funder reporting.

Qualifications

- 5+ years leading complex, cross-functional, or multi-stakeholder programs in fast-moving environments such as startups, scale-ups, innovation hubs, management consulting, technology programs, or comparable settings.

- A track record of operating with high autonomy and converting ambiguous mandates into structured, measurable execution without heavy oversight.

- Demonstrated cross-functional leadership across functions such as marketing, sales, technical delivery, curriculum, partnerships, finance, or operations, with the ability to drive alignment among senior stakeholders and external partners.

- Experience leading implementation-stage initiatives and building the systems, tools, governance, and frameworks that make delivery repeatable and scalable.

- Strong commercial, operational, and analytical judgment, including experience managing budgets, evaluating ROI or value, and using data to make decisions.

- Excellent executive communication and stakeholder-management skills, including comfort engaging at the C-suite, board, and government-funder level.

- Strong project and program-management discipline, with the ability to manage competing priorities, dependencies, risks, and deadlines without losing sight of outcomes.

- Degree in Business, Engineering, Public Policy, Technology, or a related field; an MBA or comparable graduate credential is considered an asset.

- Proficiency in Google Workspace and CRM or program-management tools; Zoho experience and fluency with modern AI tools are strongly preferred.

- Demonstrated interest in startups, innovation, AI adoption, and the Canadian entrepreneurship ecosystem.

Benefits and Perks

We offer a competitive benefits package designed to support your health, well-being, and work-life balance, including:

● Comprehensive health and dental benefits

● Vision care coverage

● Life insurance

● Paid time off

● Flexible float days

● Convenient on-site parking

● Opportunities to participate in company events, team activities, and employee experiences

Accessibility and Equal Opportunity

BHive is committed to building an inclusive organization that values the contributions of people with disabilities. We provide an accessible environment where employees and applicants can access our services, facilities, and information in a way that meets their individual needs. BHive is an equal opportun
Requirements
Key Responsibilities Partner & Ecosystem Mapping: Identify and evaluate potential channel partners (VCs, accelerators, trade associations, university programs, startup hubs) across target regions. Maintain a partner tracker with contact details, engagement status, and partnership potential. Support senior team members in preparing partnership proposals, MOUs, and collaboration frameworks. Pipeline Research & Data: Research and identify high-potential startups across Europe through database mining, portfolio scraping, funding announcements, and event attendance lists. Build and maintain structured prospect databases using tools such as Tracxn, Crunchbase, Dealroom, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Apollo.io, and Hunter.io. Conduct desk research on individual companies and founders to prepare company intelligence briefs and preliminary assessments for internal and external stakeholders. Monitor funding rounds, product launches, and expansion signals to identify timely outreach opportunities. Lead Qualification & Assessment: Due Diligence. Evaluate prospective companies against TBDC’s origination criteria: market readiness, expansion timing, product-market fit, founding team quality, North American market opportunity, stage alignment, and operational feasibility. Prepare structured assessments and scoring summaries to support intake decisions by senior leadership. Outbound Outreach & Prospecting: Execute structured cold outreach campaigns via email, LinkedIn, and other channels to engage prospective founders and ecosystem partners. Draft and personalize outreach sequences, follow-up cadences, and value-driven messaging aligned with Horizon and Pivot program positioning. Manage prospect responses, schedule discovery calls, and hand off qualified leads to senior team members. Track outreach performance (open rates, response rates, conversion rates) and iterate on messaging and targeting. Reporting & Presentations: Prepare weekly and monthly pipeline reports covering lead volume, outreach activity, conversion metrics, and regional breakdowns. Build and maintain dashboards and trackers to give leadership real-time visibility into pipeline health. Create presentation decks for senior management summarizing pipeline progress, sourcing insights, and market intelligence. Support data-driven decision-making by analyzing outreach and conversion data to surface trends and recommend strategy adjustments. CRM & Operations: Log all lead interactions, outreach activity, and pipeline movement in the CRM system. Ensure data hygiene and consistency across all tracking systems. Collaborate with the marketing team to align outreach with campaign calendars, content initiatives, and event timelines. All other duties as assigned by the Senior Management and Venture Intake and Growth team. Eligibility Education Bachelor’s degree in Business, Finance, Economics, Computer Science, or Engineering (required). Technical Skills Proficiency with CRM platforms (HubSpot, Zoho, Salesforce, or similar) for lead tracking and reporting. Strong working knowledge of lead generation and prospecting tools (e.g., Clay, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Tracxn, Crunchbase, Dealroom, Apollo.io, Hunter.io). Ability to conduct market research and data analysis to qualify leads and generate actionable insights. Advanced proficiency in Google Workspace (Sheets, Slides, Docs) and familiarity with tools like Airtable, Canva, and data visualization platforms. Familiarity with APIs and frontier LLMs (e.g., Claude, GPT) for research automation, data enrichment, and workflow optimization. Comfort working with large datasets and building structured trackers and dashboards. Experience 1-3 years of post-graduate experience in management consulting, venture capital, investment banking, or a related analytical role. Exposure to startup ecosystems, accelerators, incubators, or venture capital is strongly preferred. Demonstrated ability to conduct structured research, synthesize findings, and present recommendations clearly. Experience with outbound prospecting or business development is an asset. Entrepreneurial experience (founding, co-founding, or early-stage operator roles) is an asset.