Director of Engineering, AI Platform

Asana; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 306,000 - 360,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Mental health benefits

Career coaching

Family building benefits

Retirement plans

Culinary options

Job summary

Asana seeks a Director of Engineering to lead the AI Platform organization, shaping multi-year strategy for retrieval, model serving, and evaluation systems across enterprise workflows. You’ll mentor managers across San Francisco and New York City, fostering autonomous ownership and high execution standards.

We offer an office-centric hybrid model with in‑office days and flexible WFH options. The base salary range of $306,000–$360,000 reflects market value and individual qualifications.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering experience with leadership experience including managing managers.
• Proven track record of using AI tools daily with expertise in serving architectures, inference providers, and evaluation systems.
• Proven experience optimizing infrastructure costs and unit economics at scale.
• Platform mindset: earning trust, clear standards, data-driven prioritization.
• Skilled asynchronous communicator with distributed teams across time zones.

Responsibilities

• Lead the AI Platform pillar by establishing multi-year vision and technical strategy for retrieval, model serving, and evaluation systems.
• Optimize AI infrastructure costs, manage model selection, routing, and prompt efficiency to protect margins at scale.
• Establish evaluation frameworks and performance standards that enable product teams to measure quality, cost, and latency.
• Lead and mentor managers across San Francisco and New York City to build autonomous ownership and high execution standards.
• Evaluate when to adopt frontier models vs open-weight models and manage provider relationships to avoid vendor lock-in.
• Provide architectural leadership and defend build-versus-buy decisions with data and technical authority.

Skills

AI Platform leadership

Inference architectures

RAG architectures

Strategy development

Cross-functional leadership

Cost optimization

Job description

We are looking for a Director of Engineering to lead our AI Platform organization. This group builds the foundational systems powering every AI experience across Asana. In this role, you will lead four key teams through their engineering managers: Context (search, retrieval, and knowledge extraction across the Asana Work Graph), LLM Foundations (model serving, inference infrastructure, provider strategy, and evaluation systems), and AI Efficiency (our center of excellence for cost, quality, and performance standards across all AI workloads). Collaborating with engineering managers and senior technical leaders, you will drive the end-to-end strategy, execution, and architecture that define how humans and AI work together at Asana to build trusted, reliable, high-value product workflows for enterprise customers worldwide. Your mission is to make Asana’s AI platform the most reliable, economical, and performant foundation in the industry for agentic enterprise software, giving Asana the leverage to ship AI products faster than anyone else.

This role is based in our San Francisco 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.

What you’ll achieve

• Drive Strategy & Execution Across the AI Teammates Pillar: Lead the multi-year vision and technical strategy for Asana’s AI platform, covering retrieval and agent context, model serving and inference, model portfolio strategy, and evaluation systems.
• Optimize AI Infrastructure Costs: Own cost-per-execution as a primary engineering metric, managing model selection, routing, open-weight versus frontier trade-offs, inference optimization, caching, and prompt efficiency to protect product margins at scale.
• Establish AI Evaluation Frameworks: Establish evaluation frameworks, regression prevention, and performance standards that product teams can rely on out of the box, making quality, cost, and latency measurable defaults.
• Lead and Mentor Teams: Lead and mentor managers and their teams across San Francisco and New York City, building autonomous owners, recruiting top talent, and maintaining high execution standards.
• Manage Model Strategy: Evaluate when to adopt frontier models versus open-weight models and structure provider relationships to prevent vendor lock-in.
• Architectural Leadership: Pressure-test architectural decisions, arbitrate build-versus-buy debates with data, and act as the trusted technical authority for AI infrastructure accuracy across the company.
• Drive Cross-Functional Partnerships: Partner cross-functionally with product, go-to-market, and finance leaders to tie platform investments directly to business performance, unit margins, and enterprise trust.

About you

• 12+ years of software engineering experience with 5+ years of engineering leadership, including 2+ years managing engineering managers. You've built organizations, not just teams: you've hired and developed managers, restructured when the mission changed, and held a bar for both.
• Proven track record of using AI tools daily, with deep expertise in serving architectures, inference providers, agentic frameworks, RAG architectures, and scale evaluation systems.
• Proven experience optimizing infrastructure costs and unit economics at scale with concrete metrics and clear trade-offs.
• Platform mindset centered on earning trust, establishing clear standards, providing responsive support, and using data to guide team priorities.
• Skilled asynchronous communicator with experience leading distributed teams across time zones using strategy docs and decision memos.
• Adaptable decision-maker who takes clear, evidence-based positions but pivots quickly as new data emerges.

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 $306,000-$360,000. 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.

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.

#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.