Head of AI Platform Engineering & Strategy

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

Job summary

Asana is seeking a Director of Engineering for its AI Platform based in San Francisco, leading four teams via engineering managers. You will drive strategy, execution, and architecture to build a reliable, high-value AI foundation for enterprise customers worldwide.

You will mentor managers, shape model strategy, and partner with product and finance to align platform investments with business metrics. This hybrid, office-centric role emphasizes collaboration across locations and teams.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering experience, with 5+ years in leadership and 2+ years managing managers.
• Proven track record using AI tools daily and deep expertise in serving architectures, inference providers, and evaluation systems.
• Proven experience optimizing infrastructure costs and unit economics at scale with concrete metrics.
• Platform mindset focused on earning trust, establishing clear standards, and data-driven priorities.
• Skilled asynchronous communicator with experience leading distributed teams across time zones.

Responsibilities

• Lead multi-year vision and technical strategy for Asana’s AI platform, including retrieval, model serving, and evaluation systems.
• Own cost-per-execution and optimize AI infrastructure costs, including model selection, routing, and prompt efficiency.
• Establish evaluation frameworks, regression prevention, and performance standards for product teams.
• Mentor managers and teams across locations, hiring and developing leadership talent.
• Architectural leadership: arbitrate build-versus-buy debates and ensure accuracy of AI infrastructure.

Skills

AI tooling usage

Serving architectures

Inference providers

Agentic frameworks

RAG architectures

Scale evaluation systems

Distributed teams leadership

Tools

Model serving infrastructure

Job description

Asana is seeking a Director of Engineering for its AI Platform based in San Francisco, leading four teams via engineering managers. You will drive strategy, execution, and architecture to build a reliable, high-value AI foundation for enterprise customers worldwide.

You will mentor managers, shape model strategy, and partner with product and finance to align platform investments with business metrics. This hybrid, office-centric role emphasizes collaboration across locations and teams.