Technical Project Manager – AI Agents & Automation

Join America’s favorite family bakery since 1934—home of Little Debbie®, Drake’s® Cakes, and Sunbelt Bakery® Granola Bars. Work with legacy brands that bring smiles to faces nationwide, including yours. You’ll experience a culture committed to work-life balance, guaranteed time off, and supportive health and wellness offerings. Enjoy profit sharing, long-term job security, and a range of exciting career paths. When you join McKee Foods, you’ll discover a better way to live and work.

Pay

Salaried grade 9, 11 or 12
 $85,400 - $123,600 / year, depending on experience and qualifications.

Actual salaries may vary and in some cases may be higher with extensive experience and strong performance.

Exempt

Schedule

1st Shift (Monday – Friday, 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.), other hours as needed

Hybrid with minimum three days on-site per week

Location

10260 McKee Road, Collegedale TN 37315

Job Summary

McKee Foods is seeking a Project Manager to join our Agile Information Services team. Sitting within the IT organization and reporting to IT Project Management, the Technical Project Manager will lead a strategic portfolio of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation initiatives. You will partner closely with our internal IT development team to drive cutting-edge agentic AI use cases, while also providing oversight and delivery management for external consultants specializing in automation.

We are looking for an exceptional, adaptable leader with a solid technical foundation, strong financial acumen, and a tremendous ability to learn, grow, and adapt in a rapidly changing technology landscape. You must be driven by continuous value delivery. A critical mandate of this role is value realization: you will track project costs, measure performance, and ensure a transparent, consistent Return on Investment (ROI) across the entire automation and AI portfolio.

Project Leadership & IT Partnership

• Includes the end-to-end Agile delivery of a designated portfolio of AI and automation projects, providing regular reporting on progress, risks, ROI, and milestones to the IT Leadership Team
• Partner seamlessly with the internal IT development team to scope, build, and deploy agentic AI and cognitive workflows
• Manage the project deliverables of external automation consultants, ensuring their work aligns with IT standards, architectural guidelines, and business timelines
• Act as a catalyst for innovation, continuously learning and adapting to rapidly evolving AI trends to identify new, value-driving use cases

Value Realization & Financial Tracking

• Design and execute a practical value realization framework to measure the business impact of all AI and automation deployments
• Maintain solid financial tracking mechanisms to accurately monitor project costs, including infrastructure, licensing, vendor billable hours, and internal IT resource allocation
• Perform solid financial analysis to calculate and present ROI to executive leadership, ensuring all initiatives consistently deliver tangible business value
• Transition successful deployments from project phases into measured, value-generating operational assets

Strategy & Execution

• Apply a deep understanding of Agile/Scrum principles to manage highly iterative AI development and structured automation deployments
• Act as the strategic liaison between business stakeholders, external vendor consultants, and internal IT engineering functions
• Maintain rigorous documentation and reporting standards to support data analytics and continuous improvement initiatives

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Business Analytics or related field
• 3 years in Technical Project Management, with a proven track record of successfully leading software development, IT, or AI-focused initiatives using Agile or similar methodologies
• A tremendous ability to learn, grow, and adapt to new technologies (e.g., GenAI, LLMs, agentic frameworks) while maintaining a relentless focus on delivering business value
• Strong capability in financial tracking, cost management, and ROI calculation
• A balance of technical literacy and business strategy is required
• Experience partnering cross-functionally with internal IT development teams while successfully managing the delivery of external vendors and consultants and presenting to senior leadership teams

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree in Business Analytics or related field
• PMP Certification
• 5+ years in Technical Project Management, with a proven track record of successfully leading software development, IT, or AI-