Principal Software Engineer, Asana Platform

New York City · San Francisco · USD 365,500-380,000 / year · 12+ years experience · Hybrid · Posted Oct 2, 2026

At a glance

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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The Platform organization at Asana builds the services and shared experiences that every Asana product runs on, including the Work Graph and associated APIs.
The Principal Software Engineer will serve as the senior technical leader for the organization, owning the architecture and driving high-stakes, long-term initiatives.
This role involves partnering with senior leadership to connect engineering plans to business outcomes and shaping the future of the platform.

Set technical direction across Asana's platform, including the Work Graph, data model, APIs, and shared experiences.
Partner across R&D, Security, and Legal to drive high-stakes, long-term initiatives.
Set the bar for platform design, including interface design, separation of concerns, and reliability.
Make high-stakes decisions on build versus buy, vendor selection, and replatforming strategies.
Integrate industry insights and AI agent trends into R&D strategy.
Serve as the decision maker and backstop for technical questions that cross organizational pillars.
Mentor staff and senior staff engineers and grow technical leaders.
Represent Asana's platform engineering externally through talks and writing.

12+ years building production software, including experience setting technical direction across a large organization.
Experience building platforms at scale where architectural decisions have proven effective over years.
Deep experience with distributed systems and large, shared data models.
Experience leading at least one major replatforming or migration in a system that could not stop serving customers.
Ability to communicate at every level of a company, from design reviews to executive strategy discussions.
Demonstrated ability to grow staff and senior staff engineers into larger scopes.
Demonstrated curiosity about AI tools and emerging technologies.

Office-centric hybrid schedule.
Standard in-office days are Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday.
Option to work from home on Wednesdays.
Friday work-from-home eligibility depends on the type of work and team partnerships.