Program Manager, Enterprise AI Literacy & Enablement

Applied Materials • Austin, TX

2d • $96,000 - $132,000 • Onsite

About The Position

Applied Materials is the world's largest supplier of semiconductor manufacturing equipment — and how quickly our workforce harnesses AI directly shapes our ability to innovate, execute, and compete. This role sits on the team responsible for driving enterprise-wide AI adoption and culture-building: turning strategic intent into measurable workforce capability. You will design and run the programs that move Applied Materials employees from AI-curious to AI-proficient, and you will do so at the pace and scale a global technology manufacturer demands. This is not a training-catalog role. It is an enterprise change initiative, and you will own it.

Requirements

• Running complex programs at enterprise scale. You have led large, cross-functional initiatives at companies with 5,000+ employees and know how to manage scope, stakeholders, timelines, and competing priorities without losing momentum.
• Influencing without authority. You build trust and alignment with senior leaders and functional partners through credibility and clarity, not org-chart leverage — and you are comfortable presenting to executives on a regular basis.
• Reading the organization. You pick up on unwritten culture, political dynamics, and decision-making patterns through observation — you don't need everything spelled out to know what will and won't work.
• Anticipating second-order effects. Before making recommendations, you map downstream risks, stakeholder implications, and KPI impacts — and you flag them proactively rather than waiting to be asked.
• Translating strategy into structured execution. You are equally at home writing a program charter and running a weekly status meeting; you know that strategy only matters if it lands in practice.
• Facilitating executive workshops with confidence. You can design and lead a two-hour session with a roomful of skeptical senior leaders — adjusting on the fly when energy drops or a question derails the agenda.
• Sustaining energy and credibility across a long initiative. AI enablement is a multi-year journey with inevitable plateaus; you keep stakeholders engaged, communicate wins clearly, and retool when a program isn't working.

Nice To Haves

• 5+ years of program or change management experience inside a large, complex enterprise; experience in a technology, semiconductor, or advanced manufacturing environment is a plus.
• Demonstrated experience designing and facilitating executive-level learning experiences — preferably including AI or digital transformation content.
• Hands-on familiarity with enterprise AI tools such as Microsoft Copilot, GitHub Copilot, or equivalent productivity AI platforms; experience training others to use them is strongly preferred.
• Exposure to responsible-AI or AI governance frameworks — including working with Legal, Compliance, or Data Governance teams to evaluate and mitigate AI-related risks.
• Experience building or scaling an ambassador, champion, or peer-network program across multiple business units.

Responsibilities

• Own the enterprise AI literacy roadmap. Define the multi-year curriculum strategy — segmented by role, function, and proficiency tier — and translate it into a concrete quarterly execution plan with named milestones and owners.
• Drive measurable capability gains. Instrument every program initiative against a KPI framework that tracks usage and adoption rate, proficiency level by employee tier, time-saved and productivity impact, and confidence/sentiment scores — then report findings to senior leadership on a regular cadence.
• Design and deliver leader-facing workshops. Build and facilitate hands-on sessions for people managers and executives on [Applied's AI tool stack, including Microsoft Copilot] — equipping leaders to model new working behaviors and set expectations for their teams.
• Build and activate an AI Champion Network. Recruit, onboard, and hold accountable a distributed community of AI ambassadors across business units; provide them with enablement resources, feedback loops, and executive air cover so they can accelerate adoption where you cannot be present.
• Lead change management, not just communications. Proactively map adoption barriers — cultural, technical, and structural — develop mitigation strategies, and work with managers to shift behaviors before resistance becomes inertia.
• Partner on responsible-AI governance. Collaborate with Legal, Security, Compliance, and Data Governance stakeholders to ensure every program initiative remains aligned with Applied's responsible-AI principles and regulatory requirements.
• Align and influence cross-functional stakeholders. Navigate a matrixed organization to secure buy-in, resources, and sponsorship from business unit leaders and senior executives — without direct authority over any of them.
• Tie learning outcomes to business performance. Frame every program deliverable in terms of productivity improvement, operational efficiency, or competitive advantage — not only employee satisfaction or participation counts.
• Iterate rapidly. Collect participant feedback, benchmark against industry peers, and refine program design continuously — treating each cohort as a data point, not a finish line.

Benefits

• supportive work culture that encourages you to learn, develop, and grow your career
• comprehensive benefits package
• participation in a bonus and a stock award program

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed