The Role
Leads Coupa’s AI platform engineering strategy, roadmap, and global engineering organization across the US and India. Oversees model training, evaluation, serving, data infrastructure, AI use-case prioritization, strategic technology partnerships, hiring, budgets, and delivery. Ensures data privacy, tenant isolation, and responsible AI practices while presenting business impact and technical strategy to executive stakeholders.
Summary Generated by Built In
Coupa makes margins multiply through its community-generated AI and industry-leading total spend management platform for businesses large and small. Coupa AI is informed by trillions of dollars of direct and indirect spend data across a global network of 10M+ buyers and suppliers. We empower you with the ability to predict, prescribe, and automate smarter, more profitable business decisions to improve operating margins.
Why join Coupa?
- Pioneering Technology: At Coupa, we're at the forefront of innovation, leveraging the latest technology to empower our customers with greater efficiency and visibility in their spend.
- Collaborative Culture: We value collaboration and teamwork, and our culture is driven by transparency, openness, and a shared commitment to excellence.
- Global Impact: Join a company where your work has a global, measurable impact on our clients, the business, and each other.
Learn more on Life at Coupa blog and hear from our employees about their experiences working at Coupa.
The Impact of a Sr. Director, AI Platform Engineering at Coupa:
Coupa's AI platform already powers conversational and autonomous agents, frontier model integrations, production ML models, and customer-facing AI experiences through Navi and Agent Studio. The Sr. Director, AI Platform Engineering will lead the next phase of this platform, expanding our model training capabilities, deepening our data infrastructure, and scaling our AI-powered features across the full breadth of Coupa's enterprise suite. You will build and lead a team of engineers across the US and India, manage strategic technology partnerships, and deliver measurable improvements to model accuracy, efficiency, and coverage. This role reports to senior engineering leadership with regular visibility to C-level stakeholders.
What You'll Do:
- Lead the technical strategy and delivery roadmap for expanding Coupa's AI platform capabilities.
- Build and manage a high-performing engineering team across the US and India, hiring across ML, data engineering, and platform disciplines.
- Drive strategic partnership evaluations with AI infrastructure and model providers.
- Define and prioritize AI use cases that deliver the highest accuracy and business impact, working closely with product leadership.
- Expand model training, evaluation, and serving infrastructure beyond frontier model integrations.
- Own data strategy for AI, ensuring the right data pipelines, quality frameworks, and privacy-safe practices feed model development.
- Coordinate with existing AI platform, data platform, application platform, and cloud operations teams.
- Manage budget, hiring plan, and delivery milestones for the AI platform engineering organization.
- Present strategy, progress, and results to VP/SVP/C-level stakeholders.
- Ensure data safety, tenant isolation, and responsible AI practices across all AI capabilities.
What You Will Bring to Coupa:
- 15+ years of software engineering experience, with 5+ years in engineering leadership (Director or Sr. Director level).
- Track record building and leading AI/ML engineering teams of 15+ people across multiple geographies.
- Deep technical understanding of ML/AI systems, including model training, fine-tuning, RAG, and model serving. Must be able to evaluate technical decisions and challenge architects.
- Experience delivering AI/ML products in an enterprise B2B SaaS environment.
- Experience scaling engineering teams and shipping complex AI capabilities from concept to production.
- Strong partnership and vendor management experience with major AI and cloud providers.
- Experience with cloud infrastructure at enterprise scale.
- Track record managing distributed teams across US and India.
- Excellent executive communication, translating technical strategy into business impact for C-level audiences.
- Understanding of data privacy, tenant isolation, and responsible AI practices.
- Advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
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The successful candidate’s starting salary will be determined based on permissible, non-discriminatory factors such as skills, experience, and geographic location.
At Coupa, we are 100% committed to creating and nurturing an environment that supports your physical, mental, and community well-being. We offer a comprehensive suite of benefits designed to help you and your family thrive:
Global Well-Being Perks (For All Employees Globally)
- Global Wellness Days: Enjoy two designated, company-wide paid wellness days off each year (typically the first Friday in March and the last Friday in September) so the entire global team can unplug, step away, and recharge together .
- Birthday Time-Off: Celebrate your day! Coupa provides a paid day off on your birthday or another day of your choice within your birthday month .
- Volunteer Time Off (VTO): Giving back is in our DNA. We offer 40 hours of paid VTO annually to support the community initiatives and volunteer programs you are passionate about .
- Employee Assistance Program (EAP): Access free, confidential, 24/7/365 counseling and resources for emotional support, work-life solutions, financial advice, legal guidance, and support for new parents .
- Business Travel Protection: Travel with peace of mind. Zurich Travel Assist provides medical, safety, pre-trip planning, and emergency support during any business travel .
- Referral Bonus Program: Share the Coupa experience! Receive generous monetary referral bonuses when you successfully refer talented friends or acquaintances who are hired into open roles .
Please note: In addition to these global well-being perks, Coupa offers highly competitive, location-specific benefits packages (which include comprehensive medical/dental insurance, retirement/pension plans, and life or accident protection) tailored to your primary work location. Your recruiter will walk you through the specific regional benefits package for this role during the interview process.
Coupa complies with relevant laws and regulations regarding equal opportunity and offers a welcoming and inclusive work environment. Decisions related to hiring, compensation, training, or evaluating performance are made fairly, and we provide equal employment opportunities to all qualified candidates and employees.
Please be advised that inquiries or resumes from recruiters will not be accepted.
By submitting your application, you acknowledge that you have read Coupa’s Privacy Policy and understand that Coupa receives/collects your application, including your personal data, for the purposes of managing Coupa's ongoing recruitment and placement activities, including for employment purposes in the event of a successful application and for notification of future job opportunities if you did not succeed the first time. You will find more details about how your application is processed, the purposes of processing, and how long we retain your application in our Privacy Policy.
Skills Required
- 15+ years of software engineering experience
- 5+ years of engineering leadership experience at Director or Senior Director level
- Experience building and leading AI/ML engineering teams of 15 or more across multiple geographies
- Deep technical understanding of ML/AI systems, including model training, fine-tuning, RAG, and model serving
- Experience delivering AI/ML products in an enterprise B2B SaaS environment
- Experience scaling engineering teams and shipping complex AI capabilities from concept to production
- Strong partnership and vendor management experience with major AI and cloud providers
- Experience with cloud infrastructure at enterprise scale
- Experience managing distributed teams across the US and India
- Excellent executive communication skills, including translating technical strategy into business impact for C-level audiences
- Understanding of data privacy, tenant isolation, and responsible AI practices
- Advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience
What the Team is Saying
Aditya Maheshwari
Sr. Software Engineer, Cloud
Alex Moon
Operations Analyst, Order Management
Jose Miguel Jimenez
Procurement
Jessica Fonseca
Technical Support Specialist
Daniela Aristizábal
Associate Planning & Operations Analyst
Coupa Compensation & Benefits Highlights
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Healthcare Strength — Coverage includes medical, dental, and vision for employees and dependents starting Day 1, and plan quality is often characterized as good to very good. Mental‑health and employee‑assistance resources further bolster the offering.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Flexible/unlimited-style time off, floating holidays, and 40 hours of paid volunteer time are highlighted across locations. These policies are frequently cited alongside strong overall PTO usability depending on role and workload.
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Parental & Family Support — Paid parental leave and family-support resources (e.g., adoption, surrogacy, and back-to-work assistance) are explicitly included. Recent examples reference multi‑month leave durations for new parents.
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The Company
What We Do
Coupa is a global technology company that helps businesses run smarter by connecting all the ways they spend money — from procurement and expenses to payments and supply chain decisions — in one intelligent platform. In simple terms, Coupa gives organizations the visibility and control they need to make better financial choices, reduce waste, and drive real impact. It’s where technology meets purpose: helping companies manage their resources more responsibly while creating a positive ripple across their people, partners, and the planet.
Why Work With Us
At Coupa, we prioritize an inclusive and empathetic workplace where every voice is valued. Our teams are proactive and accountable, ensuring we collaborate effectively to achieve our goals. The foundation of our culture rests on our people; we believe in fostering an environment that encourages innovation and curiosity.
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Coupa Offices
Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
Our virtual-first approach is intentional. It gives you the freedom to do your best work in a space that supports focus, balance, and creativity, while staying connected to a global team of changemakers who are redefining the future of business spend
Typical time on-site:
Flexible
Foster City
HR
Ann Arbor
Bangalore office
Bogotá, CO
Boston, MA
Chicago, IL
Dubai, Dubai 48800
Hyderabad office
São Paulo, BR
Pune office
Shivaji Nagar, IN
Singapore, SG
Tokyo Office
Uppsala, SE
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