Senior Director, Engineering AI Studio (CX & EX)

At Freshworks we are building the future of customer and employee engagement - and AI agents are at the center of it. The AI Agent Platform is the foundation on which our next generation of autonomous and assistive experiences are built. AI Studio is the product surface that brings that platform to life: the place where builders design test deploy observe and continuously optimize AI agents that ship inside our CX and EX products.
We are looking for a visionary engineering leader to own AI Studio end to end. As the Senior Director of Engineering for AI Studio you will lead a dynamic multi-disciplinary organization that builds the front-end experience and the Backend-for-Frontend (BFF) layer for the AI Agent Platform and embeds these capabilities natively within our CX and EX product lines. This is a pivotal high-visibility role with the opportunity to shape how thousands of businesses build and operate AI agents - setting the bar for craftsmanship developer experience reliability and scale.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead a dynamic multi-disciplinary organization of engineers and engineering managers spanning front-end BFF/services and platform integration.
• Own the vision and technical execution for AI Studio - the end-to-end experience to build test deploy observe and optimize AI agents on the AI Agent Platform.
• Deliver a best-in-class front end and a robust Backend-for-Frontend (BFF) layer that expose the AI Agent Platforms capabilities to builders with speed trust and clarity.
• Embed AI Studio natively within both CX and EX product lines ensuring a seamless consistent builder and end-user experience across surfaces.
• Establish the agent lifecycle as a first-class product: authoring and configuration testing and evaluation safe deployment live observability and data-driven optimization.
• Partner deeply with the AI Agent Platform AI/ML and Data Science teams to surface state-of-the-art models tools and orchestration capabilities through intuitive workflows.
• Define and track impact: agent build velocity time-to-deploy adoption agent quality and containment/deflection reliability and measurable ROI for CX and EX customers.
• Establish governance and trust: access controls guardrails data classification privacy/PII handling auditability and compliance-ready practices for agent workflows.

What Youll Do

• Set the AI Studio vision: Define the strategy roadmap and operating model for a unified studio experience that lets builders create test deploy observe and optimize AI agents across CX and EX.
• Own the full builder journey: Ship the front-end and BFF that make agent authoring configuration and iteration fast intuitive and reliable - from first prototype to production at scale.
• Deliver testing & evaluation: Build the tooling for agent testing simulation and evaluation (quality safety regression) so teams ship agents with confidence and measurable quality bars.
• Enable safe scalable deployment: Provide deployment versioning and rollout controls that let teams promote agents across environments with strong guardrails and zero-downtime expectations.
• Build observability & optimization: Deliver real-time monitoring tracing and analytics for live agents - surfacing quality latency cost and outcome signals - and close the loop so insights drive continuous optimization.
• Embed across CX & EX: Ensure AI Studio integrates natively into Freshworks CX and EX products delivering a consistent experience while respecting the needs of each product line.
• Lead & inspire: Cultivate a high-performance inclusive culture across a multi-tiered organization of engineers and managers. Mentor the next generation of technical leaders and build a team known for technical excellence and execution velocity.
• Execute with excellence: Master the full development lifecycle from strategic planning and roadmap management to deployment and operations. Champion agile iterative delivery to ship exceptional products under ambitious deadlines and evolving priorities.
• Drive technical & architectural strategy: Act as the technical authority for AI Studio. Guide teams in building large-scale distributed cloud systems performant front-end architectures and resilient BFF/API layers adopting best practices and emerging AI technologies.
• Collaborate to win: Build powerful partnerships with AI Agent Platform AI/ML Product Design and GTM leaders so the AI Studio roadmap is aligned with platform capabilities business needs and customer expectations. Foster a one team mindset.
• Champion innovation & quality: Foster continuous improvement and out-of-the-box thinking. Establish and track KPIs that measure AI Studio health reliability builder productivity and business impact.
   

Qualifications :

What Youll Bring

• A Bachelors or Masters degree in Computer Science Engineering or a related field.
• 15 years of progressive experience in software engineering with a proven track record of at least 5 years in a senior leadership role (Director or above) leading product-facing platform developer-tooling or application engineering teams.
• Demonstrable experience building scaling and leading high-performing product and engineering organizations in an enterprise SaaS environment.
• Strong technical foundation in building and operating large-scale distributed systems on public cloud platforms (e.g. AWS Azure GCP) including modern front-end architectures and Backend-for-Frontend (BFF)/API design.
• Hands-on understanding of the AI/agent landscape: LLMs agent orchestration RAG evaluation and observability for AI systems and the practical realities of shipping AI features into production.
• Track record of delivering builder- or developer-facing products (studios low-code/no-code tooling or platform consoles) with excellent UX and reliability at scale.

Skills Inventory:

Leadership & Talent Management

• Inspirational leadership & mentorship
• Talent acquisition & retention
• Organizational design & scaling
• Performance management & career development

Technical & Architectural Acumen

• Front-end architecture & Backend-for-Frontend (BFF) design
• Cloud computing microservices & large-scale distributed systems
• AI agent platforms: LLMs orchestration evaluation & AI observability
• DevOps CI/CD and SRE principles
• Data security guardrails & compliance frameworks

Strategic & Business Acumen

• Long-term strategic planning & vision setting
• Roadmap development & prioritization
• Budget & resource management
• Data-driven decision making & KPI management

Execution & Collaboration

• Agile & iterative development methodologies
• Cross-functional influence & stakeholder management
• Exceptional communication & interpersonal skills
• Problem-solving & crisis management
   

Additional Information :

Please note this is a hybrid role that requires an in-office presence 3 days / week (Tue-Thu).

At Freshworks we have fostered an environment that enables everyone to find their true potential purpose and passion welcoming colleagues of all backgrounds genders sexual orientations religions and ethnicities. We are committed to providing equal opportunity and believe that diversity in the workplace creates a more vibrant richer environment that boosts the goals of our employees communities and business. Fresh vision. Real impact. Come build it with us.

Remote Work :

No

Employment Type :

Full-time