Staff Software Engineer, AI Teammates San Francisco

Asana, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 248,000 - 282,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Mental health benefits

Career coaching

Inclusive family building benefits

Long-term savings or retirement plans

In-office dining options

Job summary

Asana is seeking a Technical Lead to drive the AI Teammates Platform, shaping technical strategy and architecture for scalable, reliable agentic work across enterprise workflows.

You will bridge frontier AI with enterprise-grade software, leading a team in a hybrid SF office with collaboration across product, design, and data science. Strong leadership and mentoring are essential.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of software engineering in large codebases.
• 2+ years leading engineering teams or serving as a technical lead.
• Experience or deep interest in Applied AI / Agentic Systems such as agent orchestration, tool integration, and model evaluation frameworks.
• Ability to quickly learn and unblock teammates across different codebases.
• Strong project management skills including timeline planning and risk mitigation.
• Mentoring engineers and fostering an inclusive, safe team culture.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical strategy for the AI Teammates execution engine, tool orchestration, and platform APIs within Asana.
• Drive the team to maintain clean architecture, reliability, and scalable evaluation methodologies.
• Collaborate with product, design, data science, and external model providers (OpenAI, Anthropic) across teams.
• Architect and own the composable platform foundation enabling autonomous capabilities.
• Oversee high-impact initiatives from integration to latency tuning and cost optimization.

Skills

Backend systems

Reliability focus

Engineering leadership

Applied AI interest

Model evaluation

Cross-team collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Tools

OpenAI API

Anthropic API

Job description

AI Teammates are Asana’s flagship AI innovation - autonomous agents embedded directly into enterprise workflows that reason, act, and proactively drive work forward. The AI Teammates Platform (AITP) team owns the execution engine and platform layer that makes these AI Teammates effective, reliable, and scalable.

We build the core systems behind agentic execution: model evaluation and rollouts, proactive detection of blocked work, execution quality infrastructure, tool orchestration, and the platform APIs that power AI across all of Asana engineering. Rather than building a monolithic feature, we build a composable foundation. If a Teammate reasons, acts, or autonomously improves - that’s us.

We’re looking for an experienced Technical Lead to drive the technical strategy, architecture, and execution for the AI Teammates Platform. You will bridge the gap between frontier AI capability and enterprise-grade software engineering, operating in close partnership with frontier model providers while building systems that scale to millions of users. If you are passionate about applied AI, agentic orchestration, high-reliability backend systems, and growing high-performing engineering teams, we’d love to hear from you!

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

• Set the technical strategy for the AI Teammates execution engine, tool orchestration, and platform APIs within Asana, advocating for engineering-driven investments with a vision for keeping our systems flexible, reliable, and maintainable to meet customer needs now and in the future
• Drive the team to continually and holistically better itself, setting high standards for clean architecture, systems reliability, and evaluation methodologies while enabling the engineers around you to deliver at high velocity and grow their skills
• Be a key collaborator with other groups across Engineering and a technical counterpart to the AI Teammates team’s Engineering Manager, serving as a partner to external model providers (OpenAI, Anthropic) and representing our platform capabilities across team boundaries
• Partner with Product Management, Design, Data Science, and User Research to deeply understand agentic work patterns, and propose elegant solutions to make AI Teammates effective and trustworthy
• Architect and own the composable platform foundation, partnering with product engineering teams to enable them to build agentic capabilities into their domains in a self-serve manner
• Oversee the execution of high-impact technical initiatives—from advanced proactivity and MCP integrations to model evals, latency tuning, and cost optimization—ensuring our systems scale safely with frontier LLM updates

About You

• 6+ years of software engineering experience working in large codebases, with strong backend, systems, or reliability fundamentals.
• 2+ years leading engineering teams or serving as a technical lead, with a track record of driving technical strategy, timeline planning, and risk mitigation.
• Experience or deep interest in Applied AI / Agentic Systems: Familiarity with agent orchestration, tool integration, model evaluation frameworks, RAG, or production LLM observability.
• 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
• 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

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 $248,000 - $282,000. 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.

About us

Asana helps teams orchestrate their work, from small projects to strategic initiatives. Millions of teams around the world rely on Asana to achieve their most important goals, faster.