Director of AI and Automation - Military veterans preferred

Location: Austin, Texas, United States of America

Requisition ID: R32537

Position_Type: Full time

Job Description

About the Role

At Zendesk, we are reimagining the employee experience through AI-first thinking and intelligent automation. The Director of AI and Automation will lead this effort—balancing builder responsibilities (delivery, experimentation, technical roadmaps) with transformational leadership (vision setting, evangelism, and scaling impact across the enterprise).

This leader will be a people manager and practitioner: someone who can coach a growing team while also diving deep into design and delivery of automation, workflow orchestration, and AI agent capabilities.

What You’ll Do

Strategy & Vision

• Define and champion the AI and automation strategy for Employee Services and Core Operations, with extensibility across Zendesk.

• Translate business goals into a cohesive roadmap for workflow automation, AI tooling, and productivity improvements.

• Act as a thought leader on how AI and automation can reshape employee experience and service delivery.

Operational Responsibilities

• Supporting service and delivery teams with workflow automation, AI tools, and integrations to model best practices for digital employee experience.

• Pilot and validate new AI capabilities, from LLM-based agents to workflow orchestration patterns.

• Create templates and reference architectures to accelerate adoption across domains.

• Collaborate with ITSM, Enterprise Platforms, and EX Services teams to automate Tier 0–2 support and optimize employee-facing workflows.

Transformational Leadership

• Drive employee AI adoption across Zendesk through evangelism, enablement, and training.

• Establish governance, success metrics, and prioritization frameworks for automation use cases.

• Build strong partnerships with Security, Product, Finance, GTM and HR stakeholders to align initiatives with company KPIs.

• Represent the team to senior leadership, showcasing progress and outcomes tied to employee productivity and satisfaction.

Team Leadership & Growth

• Recruit, mentor, and manage a team of solution architects and workflow automation engineers.

• Inspire a culture of experimentation, continuous improvement, and cross-functional collaboration.

• Set clear goals and accountability, balancing rapid delivery with scalable long-term architecture.

What You Bring

• 10+ years in IT, engineering, or automation, with 5+ years of leadership experience.

• Proven track record of delivering enterprise-scale solutions in fast-paced environments.

• Strong technical background with hands-on experience in workflow automation, integration frameworks, or AI/ML.

• Strategic mindset: able to set long-term vision while executing short-term wins.

• Strong people leadership and stakeholder management skills.

• Excellent communication and influence skills with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Preferred Experience

• Knowledge of ITSM and HR Operations in SaaS environments.

• Experience with LLMs, AI agents, and enterprise automation platforms.

• Background in driving automation adoption and governance in a global enterprise.

The US annualized base salary range for this position is $192,000.00-$288,000.00. This position may also be eligible for bonus, benefits, or related incentives. While this range reflects the minimum and maximum value for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations, the offer for the successful candidate for this position will be based on job related capabilities, applicable experience, and other factors such as work location. Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only (or OTE for commissions based roles), and do not include bonus, benefits, or related incentives.

Hybrid: In this role, our hybrid experience is designed at the team level to give you a rich onsite experience packed with connection, collaboration, learning, and celebration - while also giving you flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. This role must attend our local office for part of the week. The specific in-office schedule is to be determined by the hiring manager.

The intelligent heart of customer experience

Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.

Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, please click here.

Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process, please send an e-mail to peopleandplaces@zendesk.com with your specific accommodation request.

Equal employment opportunity, including veterans and individuals with disabilities.

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