Innovation Program Manager Jobs in Ottawa, ON (NOW HIRING)

Do you want to be part of a mission driven organization shaping Canada’s innovation future? Do you thrive in collaborative environments where creativity, continuous improvement, and strategic thinking are valued? Are you motivated by work that strengthens Canada’s competitiveness and delivers meaningful impact for communities and businesses? 

At Mitacs, we take a talent first approach to building Canada’s innovation capacity. We connect researchers with organizations across every region of the country to help solve pressing challenges and accelerate economic growth. By enabling business academic collaboration and supporting the development of highly skilled talent, we contribute to a resilient, future ready Canadian economy. 

Guided by our values — Impact, Integrity, Collaboration, Excellence, and Talent — we work with partners nationwide to advance research, commercialization, and innovation.

Position Summary:

As Mitacs undergoes a multi-year enterprise transformation, we are building the capabilities, systems, and culture to deliver greater impact at scale. We are seeking a highly experienced Program Manager (1-year contract) to lead the orchestration and delivery of programs under the Transformation Management Office (TMO) Portfolio, including, but not limited to, Mitacs’ Enterprise Transformation (MET).

Reporting to the Director, Enterprise Transformation, this role is accountable for ensuring alignment, integration, and delivery across multiple corporate initiatives. The Program Manager serves as the central coordination point across programs, enabling effective prioritization, managing cross-program dependencies, reporting on the integrated project plan, and ensuring leadership has clear visibility into progress, risks, issues, and required decisions.

This is a hands-on leadership role supporting leadership and driving execution. The successful candidate will bring strong judgment, the ability to navigate ambiguity, and a track record of driving trade-offs and outcomes in complex, multi‑stream environments.

Key Responsibilities:

Program Leadership and Execution:

• Provide leadership and governance across the TMO portfolio, ensuring enterprise transformation initiatives are aligned with organizational priorities
• Lead the end-to-end delivery of Enterprise Transformation programs, including planning, execution, risks and issues management, dependency management, budget management, stakeholder engagement, and delivery of key program outcomes.
• Work closely with sponsors, workstream leads, and cross-functional teams to integrate multiple workstreams, ensuring a coordinated integrated roadmap to achieving program milestones and successful adoption and outcomes.
• Manage vendor coordination and governance, including day-to-day management of consulting partner relationships.
• Prepare materials for the Executive Steering Committee (ESC) on program delivery.
• Ensure that project and program-level risks, issues, dependencies, and opportunities are identified, assessed, and mitigated throughout the program lifecycle.
• Provide regular updates in both written reports and verbally to senior leadership, workstream leads, and stakeholders on program progress, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and risks.

Governance, and Program Oversight:

• Own the development and maintenance of the enterprise transformation roadmap aligned to strategic priorities.
• Track and report on KPIs to ensure that program goals are met.
• Ensure adherence to program governance frameworks, ensuring consistency and efficiency across the transformation Portfolio.

Stakeholder Engagement, Risk Management and Delivery Alignment:

• Serve as the central point of contact for program communication, ensuring transparent, clear, and timely updates across all levels of the organization.
• Build and maintain effective working relationships with business units, sponsors, and workstream leads to ensure alignment on program goals, priorities, and outcomes.
• Work closely with the Change Management Advisor to integrate change and communication strategies into the integrated program roadmap, ensuring effective messaging that supports organizational buy-in and successful change adoption.
• Facilitate cross-functional meetings to maintain alignment on project deliverables and ensure stakeholder alignment on critical priorities. throughout the program lifecycle.
• Contribute to iterative planning and execution using Agile delivery frameworks (Scrum and SAFe), ensuring dependencies, priorities, and risks are actively managed.
• Support consistent application of Agile practices across programs to enable predictable delivery and effective value realization.

Team Leadership and Development and Continuous Improvement:

• Lead, coach, and develop a small project management & delivery team.
• Set clear objectives, performance expectations, and development plans for direct reports.
• Monitor workload distribution and raise resource risks proactively.
• Foster a culture of excellence, collaboration, continuous improvement, and innovation.
• Partner with the Change Management Advisor and Organizational Change Management working group to drive adoption of new processes, tools, and ways of working.
• Leverage AI tools and automation to drive personal and team productivity across program delivery, reporting, planning, and communication.

Qualifications and Experience:

• 8+ years of experience in program management within complex, multi-stakeholder environments. Demonstrated experience coordinating multiple concurrent initiatives or portfolios.

• Minimum 5 years of experience directly managing Project Managers or similar roles.
  
• Program Management (PgM) or Project Management Professional (PMP) certification or equivalent.
• Certified Scrum Master (CSM), SAFe, Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP).
• Expertise in project management tools such as Smartsheet, MS Planner, Jira, or other industry-leading platforms.
• Experience managing portfolio budgets in excess of $10M.
• Experience in managing strategic risks, program and project governance.

• Proven ability to lead and coordinate small, cross-functional teams and collaborate across multiple business units and workstreams to achieve transformation goals.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to engage and manage relationships with stakeholders at all levels of the organization.
• Excellent communication, negotiation, and stakeholder management abilities, including experience presenting to executive steering committee (ESC).
• Active user of AI tools for productivity (e.g., Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, or similar) with a mindset of continuous improvement and innovation.
• Experience managing external consulting partners (e.g., Big 4).

Preferred:

• Professional certification in Change Management (e.g., Prosci ADKAR).
• Proficiency and/or certification in Benefits Realization Management.
• Experience in managing large-scale transformation programs within the technology sector or not-for-profit sector.
• Expertise in Lean Six Sigma or other process improvement methodologies.
• Experience stepping into a function during a period of organizational transition or leadership change.
• Familiarity with Power Platform tools (Power BI, Power Automate, Power Apps).

What Success Looks Like

In the first 90 days, the successful candidate will have:

• Taken ownership of transformation program delivery and established relationships with sponsors, external vendors, and key stakeholders
• Onboarded their team and set clear expectations for performance and collaboration
• Delivered at least one reporting cycle independently. Managed the integrated workstream visual, revised governance, revised roadmap, and product board

Equity, diversity, and inclusion and reconciliation are strong commitments at Mitacs: Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion - Mitacs. We believe a diverse workforce comprised of individuals with different lived experiences, ideas, strengths, and backgrounds (e.g., gender identities and expressions, Indigeneity, race, abilities, sexual orientation, and other identities) are crucial to our success. We welcome everyone to apply and encourage you to connect with us if you require accommodations during the recruitment process.  

Hiring Range: $103,105 - $115,235

Hiring and Salary Range Transparency
 

Typically, employees are hired, transferred, or promoted within the salary range, specifically between the minimum and midpoint in the hiring range.

The salary range refers to the range of base salaries for a given position, encompassing the minimum and maximum amounts. The midpoint of the range is positioned approximately halfway between the minimum and maximum, indicating a fully qualified employee with comprehensive job knowledge and experience for the role.

Only in rare and exceptional circumstances, where a candidate has the experience, skills, and expertise that far exceed those required for the position, would we consider paying above the hiring range for this role.

Our recruitment process may use artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled tools to support activities. Any use of AI is subject to human review and all hiring decisions are made by a human member of our hiring team.