Technical Lead, API

Asana; Vancouver; Hybrid; CAD 293,000 - 333,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Mental health benefits

Career coaching & support

Inclusive family building benefits

Long-term savings or retirement plans

In-office culinary options

Job summary

Asana is seeking a staff-level Technical Lead to drive execution and technical vision for our developer platform. You will shape API design, mentor engineers, and partner with Product, Design, and Data Science to deliver a scalable, agentic experience for developers and enterprises.

This Vancouver-based, office-centric hybrid role emphasizes leadership across teams, with in-office days on Mon/Tue/Thu and optional WFH on Wed and Fri depending on work. Compensation reflects market value and impact.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience as an engineer working in large, complex codebases.
• 2+ years leading engineering teams of 5+ engineers.
• 1+ years building public-facing API products or Developer Platforms.
• Deep project management experience including high-level timeline planning, risk mitigation, stakeholder management, and coordinating the work of others.
• Excellent communication, collaboration, and delegation skills.
• Passionate about mentoring engineers at all skill levels; able to identify technical growth opportunities and deliver thoughtful, candid feedback.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical strategy for the API platform within Asana and advocate for engineering-driven investments, with a vision for keeping our systems flexible and maintainable.
• Drive the team to continually and holistically better itself, enabling the engineers around you to deliver at a high velocity while helping them grow their skills in the process.
• Be a key collaborator with other groups in Engineering and a technical counterpart to the API team’s Engineering Manager, serving as a public face for API engineering and representing our interests across team boundaries.
• Partner with Product Management, Design, Data Science, and User Research to deeply understand developer and agentic needs, and then propose elegant solutions to meet them.
• Own and shape the guidelines for what good API design looks like, partnering with product engineering teams to help them implement those best practices in a self-serve manner.
• Develop across the entire stack to make developers’ experiences better by writing clean, beautiful code and leaving things better than you found them: this includes writing Scala, Javascript, and Typescript.

Skills

Engineering leadership

API design

Public API

Mentoring engineers

Cross-functional collaboration

Tools

Scala

Javascript

Typescript

Job description

At Asana, we believe AI represents the future of work, and APIs are at the heart of how AI connects with the tools where work happens. Asana’s API team owns the gateways that enable data flow into and out of Asana, whether via the public API used to build new apps and agents or our MCP server that enables LLMs to take action in response to natural language. Asana’s rich developer platform and app ecosystem help ensure we can support every use case out there–no matter how big or small the team, and no matter which tools or workflows they use.

We’re looking for a staff-level Technical Lead to drive execution and technical vision for our developer platform. Our API team has huge, cross-cutting scope: one day you’ll be partnering with Product to define what a great agentic experience looks like and contributing to the direction of industry-wide protocols, the next you’ll be setting best practices for exposing new Asana functionality via the public API and architecting foundational changes to our API’s core feature set and frameworks, all while mentoring the engineers and developer advocates on the team. If you care deeply about building an agentic future for the enterprise and leading high-performing engineering teams, then we’d love to hear from you!

This role is based in our Vancouver office with an office-centric hybrid schedule. The standard in-office days are Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Most Asanas have the option to work from home on Wednesdays. Working from home on Fridays depends on the type of work you do and the teams with which you partner. If you're interviewing for this role, your recruiter will share more about the in-office requirements.

What you’ll achieve

• Set the technical strategy for the API platform within Asana and advocate for engineering-driven investments, with a vision for keeping our systems flexible and maintainable

• Drive the team to continually and holistically better itself, enabling the engineers around you to deliver at a high velocity while helping them grow their skills in the process

• Be a key collaborator with other groups in Engineering and a technical counterpart to the API team’s Engineering Manager, serving as a public face for API engineering and representing our interests across team boundaries

• Partner with Product Management, Design, Data Science, and User Research to deeply understand developer and agentic needs, and then propose elegant solutions to meet them

• Own and shape the guidelines for what good API design looks like, partnering with product engineering teams to help them implement those best practices in a self-serve manner

• Develop across the entire stack to make developers’ experiences better by writing clean, beautiful code and leaving things better than you found them: this includes writing Scala, Javascript, and Typescript

About you

• 10+ years of experience as an engineer working in large, complex codebases

• 2+ years leading engineering teams of 5+ engineers

• 1+ years building public-facing API products or Developer Platforms

• Deep project management experience including high-level timeline planning, risk mitigation, stakeholder management, and coordinating the work of others

• Excellent communication, collaboration, and delegation skills

• Quick learner and comfortable transitioning between different contexts and codebases, enabling you to jump in and rapidly unblock teammates facing thorny obstacles

• Deep project management experience including high-level timeline planning, risk mitigation, stakeholder management, and coordinating the work of others

• Passionate about mentoring engineers at all skill levels; able to identify technical growth opportunities and deliver thoughtful, candid feedback

Demonstrates curiosity about AI tools and emerging technologies, with a willingness to learn and leverage them to enhance productivity, collaboration, or decision-making.

• Excited to be a part of an inclusive culture where everyone brings the aspects of themselves to the workplace that they need to thrive, fostering an environment of psychological safety within your team

At Asana, we're committed to building teams that include a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills, as this is critical to helping us achieve our mission. If you're interested in this role and don't meet every listed requirement, we still encourage you to apply.

What we’ll offer

Our comprehensive compensation package plays a big part in how we recognize you for the impact you have on our path to achieving our mission. We believe that compensation should be reflective of the value you create relative to the market value of your role. To ensure pay is fair and not impacted by biases, we're committed to looking at market value which is why we check ourselves and conduct a yearly pay equity audit.

For this role, the estimated base salary range is between $211,000-$240,000. The actual base salary will vary based on various factors, including market and individual qualifications objectively assessed during the interview process. The listed range above is a guideline, and the base salary range for this role may be modified.

In addition to base salary, your compensation package may include additional components such as equity, sales incentive pay (for most sales roles), and benefits. If you're interviewing for this role, speak with your Talent Acquisition Partner to learn more about the total compensation and benefits for this role.

We strive to provide equitable and competitive benefits packages that support our employees worldwide and include:

• Mental health, wellness & fitness benefits

• Career coaching & support

• Inclusive family building benefits

• Long-term savings or retirement plans

• In-office culinary options to cater to your dietary preferences

These are just some of the benefits we offer, and benefits may vary based on role, country, and local regulations. If you're interviewing for this role, speak with your Talent Acquisition Partner to learn more about the total compensation and benefits for this role.

#LI-Hybrid #LI-HC1

About us

Asana is a leading platform for human + AI collaboration. Millions of teams around the world rely on Asana to achieve their most important goals, faster. Asana has been named to Fortune's Best Workplaces for 7+ years and recognized by Fast Company, Forbes, and Gartner for excellence in workplace culture and innovation. We offer an exceptional office-centric culture while adopting the best elements of hybrid models to ensure that every one of our global team members can work together effortlessly. With 13+ offices all over the world, we are always looking for individuals who care about building technology that drives positive change in the world and a culture where everyone feels that they belong.

We believe in supporting people to do their best work and thrive. Our goal is to ensure that Asana upholds an environment where all people feel that they are respected and valued, whether they are applying for an open position or working at the company. We provide equal employment opportunities to all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by law.

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