Program Manager

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 out