---
title: 'Project Manager at Institute of Foundation Models'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/project-manager-institute-of-foundation-models-abu-dhabi-z395ks4gf6zq'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-14'
---

# Project Manager at Institute of Foundation Models

- **Company:** Institute of Foundation Models
- **Location:** Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-02-13
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-14
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/ifm-us/34da73b2-a874-4210-ad40-4be6aa2e937a

## Job description

The Institute of Foundation Models (IFM) is seeking a Project Manager to oversee product and lab priorities in Abu Dhabi and help drive execution across research, product, and community initiatives.

This role focuses on orchestrating work rather than owning a single function: turning priorities into clear plans, keeping teams aligned, and ensuring follow-through on the tasks that move our models and products forward. A core part of this is coordinating model launches end to end – ensuring that research, engineering, product, marketing, and communications are aligned and ready when a model goes live.

The ideal candidate is structured, proactive, and comfortable working in a flat organization where everyone takes ownership and is willing to roll up their sleeves.

## Key Responsibilities

Product & Project Orchestration

- Work with Research, Engineering and Product teams to translate high-level priorities into clear project plans, milestones, and timelines.
- Maintain an up-to-date view of product roadmaps for the Abu Dhabi lab, highlighting dependencies, risks, and decision points.
- Coordinate implementation for selected products or features, ensuring that requirements, designs, and technical work stay aligned.
- Facilitate regular check-ins (standups, sprint reviews, planning sessions) to keep projects on track and unblock teams.
- Ensure that key decisions, action items, and next steps are clearly captured and followed through.

Model Launch Coordination

- Own the end-to-end coordination of model launches (e.g., K2, JAIS, PAN): from research-to-production handoff through public release and post-launch follow-up.
- Work with Research and Engineering to track readiness milestones, resolve blockers, and ensure documentation and technical artifacts are in place before launch.
- Coordinate launch timelines and dependencies across Product, Engineering, Legal, and Marketing to ensure all teams are aligned and nothing slips through the cracks.
- Support operational readiness for launches, pilots, and external partnerships – ensuring the right assets, environments, and approvals are in place.
- Run launch retrospectives to capture lessons learned and improve the process for future releases.

Marketing & Communications Liaison

- Serve as the coordination point between technical teams and Marketing/Communications (MarComms) for model launches, announcements, and external messaging.
- Ensure MarComms has timely access to technical details, key milestones, and positioning inputs needed to prepare launch materials, blog posts, and demos.
- Coordinate lab contributions to external events, conferences, and partner briefings – helping position IFM’s work effectively to outside audiences.
- Work with the Community team to ensure Abu Dhabi lab priorities are reflected in hackathons, workshops, open days, and partner programs.

Lab Operations & Cross-Team Coordination

- Serve as a coordination point for the Abu Dhabi lab: aligning work across engineering, product, community, and operations.
- Help prioritize lab initiatives and manage trade-offs when competing priorities arise.
- Coordinate with other IFM sites (e.g., international labs) to synchronize timelines, share status, and reduce duplication.
- Maintain lightweight but reliable processes and tools for tracking work, while keeping bureaucracy low.

Execution, Tracking & Reporting

- Set up simple, transparent mechanisms to track progress on key initiatives.
- Prepare concise status updates for leadership and stakeholders, highlighting progress, risks, and decisions needed.
- Proactively identify blockers and drive them to resolution by pulling in the right people – not by escalating everything.
- Help the team continuously improve how it works: refine processes, simplify where possible, and share best practices across projects.

Essential Experience

- 3–6 years of experience in project management, program management, product operations, or closely related roles in a technology, research, or product-building environment.
- Proven track record of running cross-functional projects end to end: from clarifying goals and scope, to planning, to execution and follow-through.
- Strong organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple parallel workstreams, priorities, and stakeholders.
- Comfortable working with technical teams (researchers, engineers, product) and understanding basic technical concepts well enough to manage timelines, dependencies, and risks.
- Clear and concise communicator, able to summarize complex work into simple updates for different audiences (leadership, partners, internal teams).
- Demonstrated ability to work in a flat, fast-moving environment – taking ownership, adapting to changing priorities, and doing what is needed to keep work moving.

## Preferred Experience

- Experience in AI/ML, deep-tech, or research lab environments where projects involve both exploration and delivery.
- Experience coordinating product or model launches – including cross-functional readiness, external communications, and post-launch follow-up.
- Familiarity with product development lifecycles (from discovery and prototyping to launch and iteration).
- Exposure to foundation models, large-scale AI systems, or similar technologies (formal expertise not required, but curiosity and willingness to learn are important).
- Comfort working across technical and non-technical audiences, including marketing, communications, and executive stakeholders.

Academic Qualifications

- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field preferred.

## About Institute of Foundation Models

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: The Institute of Foundation Models (IFM) is a global AI research lab dedicated to the open and independent development of frontier-class foundation models, operating under the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI).
- **Entity Type**: Academic Research Institute (part of MBZUAI, a university)
- **Headquarters**: Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (with labs in Sunnyvale, CA, USA and Paris, France)
- **Founded**: 2026 (launched with Silicon Valley lab)
- **Founders**: Part of MBZUAI, led by President Eric Xing

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Artificial Intelligence research, foundation model development, open-source AI
- **Target customers**: Researchers, academia, industry partners, and the global AI community (B2B/Research/Public sector)
- **Mission**: To produce the world’s leading models across modalities while ensuring responsible, open, and socially meaningful impact.

## Products & Services
For each major offering:
- **JAIS Series**: State-of-the-art open-source Arabic LLM covering Modern Standard Arabic and regional dialects, including Moroccan Arabic (Darija). Fully documented training lifecycle.
- **Vicuna**: Lightweight open chatbot surpassing 90% of ChatGPT and Bard quality.
- **K2 (K2-65B)**: Large language model with advanced reasoning capabilities, focusing on sustainable performance. Updated version soon to be released.
- **PAN World Model**: Next-gen foundation model for embodied reasoning and physical-world simulation, integrating multimodal inputs (language, video, spatial data, physical actions). Includes PAN-Agent for multimodal reasoning tasks.
- **FM For Bio – GET**: Domain-specific model for biology.
- **LLM360**: Open-source framework enhancing transparency and collaboration in LLM research, providing training code, datasets, and model checkpoints.
- **Research partnerships**: Collaboration with academia, startups, and enterprises via shared compute, co-publishing, and co-development.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not applicable (non-commercial research institute)
- **Key Metric**: Funded by MBZUAI; specific budget not publicly disclosed. Notable open-source model releases (JAIS, Vicuna, K2, PAN).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: MBZUAI, with international advisory boards and peer review processes. Partnerships with industry leaders, academic institutions, and public organizations.
- **Growth Signals**: Launch of Silicon Valley lab in Sunnyvale, CA (2026); expansion into Paris and Abu Dhabi nodes; active hiring for research interns, distributed ML engineers, HPC engineers; release of flagship models (PAN, K2 update).

## Competitive Advantages
- **Openness & transparency**: Full release of training code, datasets, and model checkpoints through LLM360 – one of the most transparent approaches in AI.
- **Global research network**: Three hubs (Abu Dhabi, Silicon Valley, Paris) combining academic rigor with startup agility.
- **Access to large-scale compute**: High-performance computing infrastructure for training frontier models.
- **Multilingual & cultural focus**: JAIS addresses underrepresentation of Arabic and other languages, preserving cultural authenticity.
- **World model innovation**: PAN differentiates from text-only models by predicting comprehensive world states for advanced reasoning and simulation.

## Strategic Focus
- Continue building open, powerful foundation models across language, vision, multimodal, and domain-specific systems.
- Expand global collaboration and talent acquisition, especially in Silicon Valley.
- Advance responsible AI with safety systems and international advisory boards.
- Drive real-world impact through partnerships in scientific discovery, human-AI interaction, and public good.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Collaborative, cutting-edge academic research environment with a mission to open-source AI for global benefit. Teams span Abu Dhabi, Paris, and Silicon Valley.
- **Remote/hybrid/office**: All listed roles are **on-site** (Sunnyvale, CA or Abu Dhabi). No remote policy indicated.
- **Notable perks**: Work with world-class researchers, access to large-scale compute, opportunity to publish and contribute to open-source models. The institute combines the agility of a startup with the resources of an established university.
- **Current openings**: AI Research Internship (LLM), Distributed Machine Learning Engineer, Eval360 Error Analysis Engineer, High Performance Computing Software Engineer (Supercomputing) – all on-site in Sunnyvale or Abu Dhabi.

## Sources
1. [ifm.ai](https://ifm.ai/)
2. [ifm.ai/about](https://ifm.ai/about/)
3. [jobs.lever.co/ifm-us](https://jobs.lever.co/ifm-us)
4. [LinkedIn – Institute of Foundation Models](https://www.linkedin.com/company/institute-of-foundation-models)
5. [MBZUAI News – Launch of IFM and Silicon Valley Lab](https://mbzuai.ac.ae/news/mbzuai-launches-institute-of-foundation-models-and-establishes-silicon-valley-ai-lab/)

## Other roles at Institute of Foundation Models

- [AI Engineer Internship – LLM Data](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-engineer-internship-llm-data-institute-of-foundation-models-abu-dhabi-ryr1w6wpmy2b) — Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
- [Research Scientist – World Modeling, Data](https://feeny.ai/job/research-scientist-world-modeling-data-institute-of-foundation-models-sunnyvale-bch8rt52tddk) — Sunnyvale, CA
- [Community Development Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/community-development-manager-institute-of-foundation-models-sunnyvale-1ns2xzrzec79) — Sunnyvale, CA
- [Social Media Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/social-media-manager-institute-of-foundation-models-sunnyvale-nppzja97rfm9) — Sunnyvale, CA
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- [Senior Communications Consultant](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-communications-consultant-institute-of-foundation-models-sunnyvale-q3waewdeghjx) — Sunnyvale, CA
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