Head of IT Systems Engineering (AI)

Location: San Francisco, California, United States; office-centric hybrid schedule with standard in-office days on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Most employees may work from home on Wednesdays; Friday remote work depends on the role and partner teams.

Base salary: $252,000–$296,000 per year, with potential additional equity, sales incentive pay where applicable, and benefits.

Company

Asana provides a platform for human and AI collaboration used by millions of teams worldwide.

What you will do

• Develop the multi-year vision, roadmap, and architecture for Systems Engineering, aligned with business priorities and Asana’s AI strategy.
• Lead and grow the Client Platform Engineering, Application Engineering, and Identity & Integrations teams, including hiring, performance management, succession planning, and career development.
• Own corporate endpoint management, SaaS application management, identity, and the full user lifecycle.
• Drive IT’s AI strategy by evaluating and governing Claude, Gemini, OpenAI, AI agents, and automation for onboarding, access requests, support, and compliance workflows.
• Partner with Security, Legal, Privacy, IT Support, and IT Infrastructure on AI policies, data access controls, vendor risk, issue resolution, and employee experience.
• Set client platform standards, improve performance and configuration compliance, and communicate priorities, tradeoffs, and results to senior stakeholders.

Requirements

• 10+ years of IT experience, including 5+ years directly leading systems engineering and software engineering teams in a fast-paced, cloud-first environment.
• Proven ownership of purchasing, inventory management, and budgeting at scale.
• Strong hands-on knowledge of IAM, cloud-based identity, SSO, SAML, and SCIM.
• Experience with hosted cloud applications including Okta, Google Workspace, Asana, Figma, and Slack.
• Experience establishing governance for emerging technology, including AI usage policy, data protection, and vendor risk review.
• Experience setting strategy and roadmaps, delegating effectively, and coaching or unblocking teams while staying close to technical details.
• Experience with configuration management and automation tools such as JAMF, Intune, Puppet, and Munki.
• Working knowledge of scripting and API integration using REST, OAuth, Python, PowerShell, Bash, or equivalent.
• Hands-on experience deploying, administering, and integrating enterprise AI platforms such as Claude and OpenAI through APIs, connectors, and MCP servers.
• Strong problem-solving, communication, documentation, stakeholder influence, service orientation, and curiosity about emerging AI tools.

Culture & Benefits

• Office-centric hybrid work model with flexibility varying by role and team.
• Mental health, wellness, and fitness benefits.
• Career coaching and support.
• Inclusive family-building benefits.
• Long-term savings or retirement plans.
• In-office culinary options and an inclusive workplace supporting diverse backgrounds and perspectives.