Royal Caribbean Group

Senior Manager, Program Management

Royal Caribbean Group • $120K — $145K *
Miami, FL 33186In-Person
Enterprise Technology
8 - 10 years of experience
Today
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Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 8+ years in technical program management or engineering leadership, with 3+ years in AI/ML or Gen AI initiatives.
  • Experience managing a multi-initiative portfolio with competing stakeholders.
  • Proven track record of deploying Gen AI solutions from concept to enterprise production.
  • Established intake and demand management processes in previous roles.
  • Experience with technology budgets and vendor management.

Responsibilities

  • Lead the end-to-end Gen AI intake process for business requests across multiple brands.
  • Manage delivery of concurrent Gen AI programs, ensuring alignment with business needs.
  • Own the product roadmap for Gen AI applications, balancing new use cases with technical debt.
  • Serve as operational lead for the AI Ambassador program, facilitating communication across business units.
  • Oversee AI tool licensing and consumption forecasts, ensuring alignment with budget expectations.
  • Ensure compliance with governance and risk management for all Gen AI solutions.
  • Communicate portfolio status and delivery health to senior leadership.

Benefits

  • Onsite position in Miami, Florida.
  • Opportunity to work in a cross-functional team environment.
  • Engagement with cutting-edge AI technologies and platforms.
  • Involvement in strategic decision-making processes.
  • Professional development opportunities within a leading organization.
Full Job Description
The Royal Caribbean Group's AI & Analytics Team has an exciting career opportunity for a full time Senior Manager, Program Management reporting to the Senior Director, AI Engineering.

The position is onsite and based in Miami, Florida.

The position is also not eligible for work authorization sponsorship.

Position Overview:

We are seeking a Senior Technical Program Manager to lead program delivery for the Gen AI Center of Excellence (CoE) at Royal Caribbean Group. This is a senior, cross-functional role accountable for the end-to-end lifecycle of our Gen AI portfolio - from business intake and use case qualification through solution design, custom application development, enterprise deployment, and post-production support.

The successful candidate will own the operating rhythm of a CoE that supports multiple brands and business units simultaneously. You will manage a growing demand pipeline against constrained engineering capacity, bring transparency to the portfolio through disciplined backlog and program management, and make the demand-versus-capacity case that drives investment decisions. You will work across Data Engineers, AI/ML Engineers, Data Scientists, Solution Architects, Platform Engineering, Information Security, Legal, and the Enterprise Data and AI Governance Office.

Beyond delivery, you will serve as the operational backbone of the AI Ambassador program - our federated network of business-unit representatives who surface use cases, drive adoption, and forecast AI tool demand and spend across their organizations. You will also own the commercial discipline of the portfolio: tracking AI tool licensing and consumption forecasts, managing cost-to-build against cost-to-run, and ensuring every initiative has a defensible total cost of ownership.

This role is semi-technical. You are expected to hold your own in architecture discussions on agent frameworks, retrieval-augmented generation, model selection, and platform trade-offs - and to translate those trade-offs into executive-ready decisions.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

  • Intake, Demand Management & Portfolio Governance:
    • Own the Gen AI intake process end to end - serve as the front door for business requests across all brands and business units, from initial acknowledgment through qualification, sizing, and disposition.
    • Run preliminary use case discovery sessions with requesting stakeholders, extract technical and business requirements, and bring structured, decision-ready information back to engineering teams.
    • Establish and enforce JIRA as the single source of truth for all Gen AI work - intake requests, custom development, platform initiatives, and production support.
    • Maintain a transparent, prioritized portfolio backlog that gives leadership real visibility into committed work, aging demand, and capacity constraints.
    • Build and present the demand-versus-capacity analysis that supports business cases for additional engineering resources and platform investment.


  • Program & Delivery Management:
    • Manage delivery of multiple concurrent Gen AI programs - custom agent applications, conversational and data bot solutions, Copilot Studio agents, and platform capability releases.
    • Own program plans, milestones, dependencies, and critical path across engineering, platform, data, security, and business stakeholders.
    • Drive release readiness: user acceptance testing, evaluation and accuracy benchmarking, security review, production deployment approvals, and hypercare.
    • Identify and remove blockers proactively; escalate with a recommendation, not just a problem.


  • Gen AI Product & Application Development:
    • Own the product roadmap for the Gen AI application portfolio, balancing net-new use cases against platform hardening and technical debt.
    • Partner with Solution Architects and engineering leads to define solution approach, make build-versus-buy recommendations, and ensure new applications are built on shared platform components rather than one-off stacks.
    • Define success criteria, evaluation methodology, and measurable business outcomes for every solution before development begins.
    • Drive adoption and post-deployment value realization; sunset or rework solutions that are not delivering against their business case.


  • AI Ambassador Program:
    • Serve as the operational lead for the AI Ambassador program - the federated network of business-unit representatives across Hotel Operations, Commercial, Revenue Management, Sales, Marketing, Expeditions, Finance, Tour Operations, and other functions.
    • Run the cadence with Ambassadors: use case pipeline reviews, adoption tracking, feedback loops, and enablement.
    • Consolidate and validate annual AI tool demand and cost forecasts submitted by each Ambassador organization and reconcile departmental submissions into an enterprise-level forecast.
    • Translate Ambassador-sourced ideas into qualified intake items, closing the loop so the business sees where their submissions land.


  • Cost Management & Commercial Discipline:
    • Own the AI tool licensing and consumption forecast across the enterprise portfolio - seat-based and usage-based - and track actual spend against forecast.
    • Apply cost-to-build versus cost-to-run discipline to every initiative, ensuring architecture and approach decisions account for long-term platform support and maintenance cost, not just delivery cost.
    • Partner with engineering on cost optimization levers: model routing and tiering, caching, right-sizing compute, and consumption governance.
    • Work with the internal cost tracking application to provide departmental visibility, chargeback-grade attribution, and early warning on consumption trends.
    • Support vendor evaluation and negotiation for Gen AI platforms and tooling, including total cost of ownership modeling and exit-cost analysis.


  • Governance, Risk & Compliance:
    • Ensure every Gen AI solution clears the required governance gates - Information Security review, Legal approval, Third Party Risk assessment, and Enterprise Data and AI Governance Office review - before production release.
    • Enforce data classification and handling requirements across the portfolio, with particular rigor where solutions touch Confidential or Restricted data, including guest and employee personal data.
    • Maintain and evolve the CoE's standard operating procedures for agent release, evaluation, and change management.
    • Identify program, technical, and compliance risks early; maintain a live risk register with owners and mitigation plans.


  • Stakeholder Management & Executive Communication:
    • Serve as the primary interface between the Gen AI CoE and senior business and technology leadership.
    • Produce concise, decision-oriented executive reporting on portfolio status, delivery health, capacity, adoption, and spend.
    • Set and manage expectations transparently - including saying no, or not yet, with a clear rationale.
    • Represent the CoE in enterprise architecture, governance, and investment forums.


Tools & Technology Environment:

  • The Gen AI CoE portfolio spans the following platforms and capabilities:
      • Azure AI Foundry: model catalog and managed agent capabilities
      • Azure OpenAI: GPT model family for conversational and generative applications
      • Anthropic Claude: enterprise chat and agentic workloads
      • Azure Databricks (including Mosaic AI and Genie): data engineering, ML development, and natural-language data access
      • Microsoft Copilot Studio: low-code agent development and enterprise workflow integration
      • Microsoft 365 Copilot: enterprise productivity AI
      • Azure Machine Learning: model development and deployment
      • Azure AI Search: retrieval and grounding
      • Internal Gen AI platform libraries: agent framework, auth packages, and shared middleware gateway
      • JIRA, Confluence, Azure DevOps: program, documentation, and CI/CD tooling


Qualifications & Skills:

  • Experience:
    • Minimum of 8 years in technical program management, product management, or engineering delivery leadership, with at least 3 years leading AI/ML or Gen AI initiatives.
    • Demonstrated experience managing a multi-initiative portfolio with competing stakeholders and constrained engineering capacity.
    • Track record of taking Gen AI or advanced analytics solutions from concept through enterprise production deployment - not pilots alone.
    • Experience establishing intake, demand management, and prioritization processes in an environment where they did not previously exist.
    • Experience managing technology budgets, vendor relationships, and software licensing or consumption forecasts.
    • Experience operating within enterprise security, data governance, and compliance frameworks.


  • Skills & Expertise:
    • Reasonable technical depth in the Gen AI solution lifecycle - prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, agent architectures, evaluation and accuracy measurement, model selection, and cost/performance trade-offs.
    • Ability to engage credibly with engineers on architecture and with executives on investment, and to translate fluently between the two.
    • Exceptional written and verbal communication; able to produce executive-ready material without hand-holding.
    • Proven ability to bring structure and predictability to ambiguous, fast-moving environments.
    • Strong analytical and financial literacy - comfortable building forecasts, TCO models, and capacity analyses.
    • Skilled in Agile delivery frameworks (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe) and in scaling them pragmatically rather than dogmatically.
    • High degree of ownership; operates with minimal direction and drives outcomes across teams they do not manage.


  • Education:
    • Bachelor's degree in technology or engineering fields - or a related field (or equivalent experience).


Agency and Third-Party Submissions: Please note this is a direct search by the Company, and applications through agencies and other third parties will not be accepted, nor will fees be paid for unsolicited resumes. Any unsolicited resumes will be considered the Company's property.

We know there's a lot to consider. As you go through the application process, our recruiters will be glad to provide guidance, and more relevant details to answer any additional questions. Thank you again for your interest in Royal Caribbean Group. We'll hope to see you onboard soon!

About Royal Caribbean Group

Royal Caribbean Group is a cruise vacation company with a global fleet of 63 ships traveling around the world. The company provides celebrity cruises and silversea cruises. Royal Caribbean Group was established in 1968 in Miami, Florida.

Royal Caribbean Group Careers

There has never been a more exciting time to explore job opportunities with Royal Caribbean Group, a leader in the global cruise industry known for innovation and excellence.

Work You’ll Do

Join Royal Caribbean Group's dynamic team to help redefine the travel experience for millions of guests worldwide. The company's commitment to growth and leadership in the cruise industry offers a unique platform for professionals to advance their careers. Transform the future of travel with Royal Caribbean Group, where diversity, innovation, and a passion for service converge to create extraordinary vacation experiences. Lead in a market where skills in technology, customer service, and operational excellence are prized. Royal Caribbean Group stands at the forefront of the travel industry, offering team members unparalleled opportunities for career advancement. Work alongside a global team of professionals dedicated to pioneering new paths in the cruise sector. Royal Caribbean Group fosters a culture of innovation and leadership, making it an ideal workplace for those aiming to make a significant impact.

Royal Caribbean Group Professional Pathways

The team is actively building a robust professional network, inviting individuals to master their career journey in the vibrant world of cruise travel.

Do Innovative Work

Engage with a diverse team at Royal Caribbean Group—professionals dedicated to reshaping the future of travel through continuous innovation and a deep understanding of the global travel market.

Drive Innovation and Leadership

Deliver targeted solutions and exceptional guest experiences by leveraging deep industry knowledge and a commitment to innovation that’s second to none.

Be Part of a Great Team

Join a workforce that thrives on collaboration and diversity. Royal Caribbean Group offers a variety of job opportunities that harness the capabilities of its expansive global network.

Future-proof Your Career

Royal Caribbean Group provides a wealth of opportunities for personal and professional development, supported by comprehensive training programs and a commitment to promoting from within.

Explore

Discover how Royal Caribbean Group is leading the way in employee satisfaction and guest service, setting new standards in the cruise industry.

The Royal Caribbean Group Advantage

With a focus on diversity, leadership, and professional growth, Royal Caribbean Group helps team members navigate their careers in an ever-evolving industry. The company's global scale and commitment to innovation offer unmatched opportunities for career advancement.

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Join the Team

Search open positions that match your skills and interests. Royal Caribbean Group looks for passionate, curious, creative, and solution-driven team players. SEARCH ROYAL CARIBBEAN JOBS

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Learn more about Royal Caribbean Group
Size
10,001 employees
Industry
Hospitality & Recreation
* Ladders Estimates

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