Program Director in Toronto

ABOUT LIGHTWORKS

Lightworks is a global firm that integrates consequential technologies and bolsters mission-critical programs. Launched in the AI era, Lightworks is powered by people who have spent decades implementing net-new and highly iterative technologies at scale across banking, insurance, telecommunications, and public infrastructure. Our team brings deep engineering expertise and first-hand knowledge of how organizations operate, distribute change at scale, and manage risk. We specialize in control plane engineering, bolstering mission-critical programs, modernization, and scaling emergent technologies.

THE ROLE

We are hiring a Technical Program Director to own delivery execution across Lightworks' most complex client engagements. You will sit alongside Principal Consultants inside the client environment, holding the program together across workstreams, driving milestone accountability, and representing delivery at the executive level. This is a client-facing, embedded role. You will be inside the client environment, not managing from a distance. You will be the person who keeps a complex, multi-workstream enterprise program on track inside a regulated institution.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

• Lead delivery governance across complex AI, cloud, and modernization programs, ensuring milestones, dependencies, risks, decisions, and outcomes are clear across all workstreams.
• Own and maintain the project plan, delivery roadmap, RAID log, and governance cadence, and executive reporting across one or more active client engagements.
• Own project resource management function - ensuring the right people are deployed on the right engagements at the right time and working with the Head of Consulting to forecast capacity against pipeline, and managing bench utilisation.
• Own program budget tracking, monitor spend against approved budget, forecast to completion, and flag variance to the Engagement Lead before it becomes an issue.
• Establish the operating rhythm for stand-ups, working groups, steering committees, and executive briefings, ensuring each forum drives decisions and forward movement.
• Prepare and present concise, decision-oriented status reporting for Directors, VPs, and CIO-level stakeholders.
• Coordinate across Lightworks, client teams, hyper-scalers, delivery partners, and third-party vendors to maintain alignment, accountability, and delivery momentum.
• Identify delivery risks early, escalation with clear options and impact analysis, and help teams remove blockers before timelines or outcomes are affected.
• Manage scope, approvals, change requests, dependencies, and action ownership in a disciplined and transparent way.
• Maintain RACI clarity and ensure accountability is explicit across all workstreams.
• Support engagement closeout, lessons learned, transition planning, and knowledge transfer so clients are set up for sustainable delivery after Lightworks exits.
• Contribute to Lightworks delivery standards, templates, and repeatable practices.

WHAT YOU MUST BRING

• Minimum 7-10 years of project, program, or delivery management experience in large-scale enterprise technology programs - cloud migration, AI deployment, platform modernization, data transformation, or infrastructure change.
• Experience working inside or directly serving highly regulated industries - financial services, telecommunications, insurance, or government. Advisory-only or vendor-side experience without embedded client delivery is not sufficient.
• Proven ability to operate with Director, VP, and CIO-level stakeholders, including preparing executive materials, running governance forums, and communicating trade-offs clearly.
• Strong command of Agile, waterfall, and hybrid delivery methods, with the judgement to apply the right model for the client environment.
• Experience managing complex stakeholder landscapes that include client teams, vendors, hyper-scalers, internal delivery teams, and executive sponsors.
• Experience leading change management alongside technical delivery – stakeholder adoption, communications planning, and embedding new ways of working.
• Confidence engaging in technical delivery conversations across cloud, data, AI infrastructure, security, or enterprise architecture. You do not need to be a hands-on engineer, but you must understand what your engineers are telling you.
• Strong project controls across milestones, RAID, dependencies, scope, change control, budgets, resource plans, and executive reporting.
• PMP or PgMP, or equivalent formal project/program management credential required for regulated enterprise client.
• Cloud certifications or formal cloud training across AWS, Azure is an advantage.
• Fluent in delivery tooling - Jira, Confluence, MS Project, or equivalent. You build a program structure others can navigate.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline.

WHAT WE OFFER

• Base salary, performance bonus, and equity participation benchmarked against senior delivery roles at tier-one consulting and technology firms.
• Full benefits package.
• Exposure to some of the most consequential enterprise technology programs in North America and Asia Pacific.
• Close collaboration with the Lightworks Principals and founding team across strategy, delivery, platform development and client growth.