Description

About Slack

Slack is the AI-powered platform where work happens. Used by millions of people at tens of thousands of companies, Slack brings together conversations, tools, and automation in one place — making teams more productive and connected. As a Salesforce company, Slack sits at the heart of the AI transformation reshaping how businesses operate.

The Role

We're looking for a seasoned product leader to own Slack's search and AI platform — the foundational layer that powers how millions of people find information, get answers, and benefit from AI in their daily work.

As VP Product, Search and AI Platform, you will define and execute the product strategy for Slack's core search experiences, AI model infrastructure, quality and evaluation systems, and AI model partnerships. You'll be responsible for ensuring Slack's AI capabilities deliver real customer value — they are reliable, fast, cost-effective, and trustworthy — so that every team at Slack can build exceptional AI-powered experiences on top of a world-class foundation.

You will report to the Chief Product Officer and partner closely with Engineering, Design, Trust & Security, and Go-to-Market teams. This is a highly cross-functional, senior leadership role with significant scope and visibility.

What You'll Own

Core Search Experiences

• Define the end-to-end search experience in Slack — from how queries are understood and ranked to how AI-powered answers are surfaced to users
• Drive the strategy for Slack's Enterprise Search product, connecting Slack to third-party data sources (including Google Drive, Confluence, Jira, Box, and Microsoft OneDrive/SharePoint) through a federated, real-time architecture that respects user permissions
• Advance semantic and natural language search capabilities, making it easier for people to find what they need across billions of messages and files
• Ensure search is fast, relevant, and trustworthy at massive scale

Core AI Models & Infrastructure

• Create common knowledge services that power both internal Slack features and third party tools — knowledge graph, semantic tagging, etc.
• Own the product strategy for Slack's AI model layer — foundational models that power search answers, conversation summaries, channel recaps, meeting notes, message translation, and more
• Define requirements for model selection, evaluation, and deployment across Slack's AI feature portfolio
• Drive the strategy for how Slack retrieves, ranks, and presents context to AI models to generate high-quality, grounded responses
• Partner with engineering to continuously improve the inference pipeline for quality, speed, and cost efficiency

Quality & Testing

• Build and own Slack's quality framework for all AI outputs — including hallucination detection, accuracy monitoring, automated drift detection, and regression testing
• Establish quality benchmarks and evaluation systems used across the entire AI product organization
• Own the feedback loop from user signals through to systematic quality improvements
• Define rigorous testing protocols for new models and model versions before they reach customers
• Ensure all AI features meet Slack's high standards for safety, accuracy, and reliability

AI Model Partner Strategy

• Help drive Slack’s Al partner and vendor strategy — deciding which large language models (LLMs) and AI services to use, when, and why.
• Drive a multi-cloud, multi-vendor approach to AI model access to optimize for quality, cost, speed, and reliability
• Evaluate and benchmark emerging models and providers, running structured experiments to inform selection decisions
• Collaborate with Salesforce's AI teams to align on shared model investments and co-development opportunities
• Manage partnerships with leading AI model providers — including Anthropic, Amazon Web Services, Google, and others — to stay ahead of model capabilities and shape roadmaps in Slack's interest
• Negotiate partnership terms that protect customer data and uphold Slack's zero data retention, privacy-first principles
• Build resilience and optionality into Slack's model infrastructure to avoid single-vendor dependency

Who You Are

• 10+ years of product management experience, with at least 5 years leading AI/ML or search product teams at scale
• Deep technical fluency across search systems, information retrieval, large language models, and AI/ML infrastructure — able to engage deeply with engineering teams and communicate clearly to executive audiences
• Experience managing AI model or vendor strategy — you've evaluated, selected, and deployed LLMs or AI services in production and understand the tradeoffs between quality, cost, latency, and vendor risk
• A quality-first mindset — you've built evaluation frameworks, benchmarks, or testing systems for AI/ML outputs and have a strong sense of what great looks like at scale
• Proven team-building skills — you've grown and led high-performing product management teams of 5 or more people and know how to attract and develop exceptional talent
• Strong cross-functional leadership — you thrive in complex organizations and can align product, engineering, design, security, legal, and go-to-market stakeholders around a shared vision
• Strategic thinking paired with disciplined execution — you can articulate a compelling long-term vision and translate it into a clear near-term roadmap
• Deep customer empathy — you understand how people search for and consume information at work, and you're driven to make that experience as effortless as possible
• Resilience in a fast-moving environment — the AI landscape is evolving rapidly, and you bring clarity and focus rather than anxiety to that pace of change

Bonus Points

• Experience building search or AI products for a collaboration, productivity, or enterprise software platform
• Familiarity with enterprise security and compliance standards (such as SOC 2, FedRAMP, HIPAA, or GDPR) as they apply to AI products
• Experience with multi-cloud AI infrastructure and model deployment strategies
• Background in building AI platform capabilities for third-party developers
• Familiarity with the Salesforce ecosystem and enterprise AI platforms

Why This Role Matters

Slack is at an inflection point. AI is transforming every part of how people work — from finding information and summarizing conversations, to automating tasks and collaborating with AI agents. This role owns the foundation that makes all of it possible. You won't just be shipping AI features — you'll be building the platform that determines how capable, trustworthy, and delightful AI can be across all of Slack.

The right person for this role will shape how millions of people experience AI at work, every single day.

Slack is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

For roles in San Francisco and Los Angeles: Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring, Salesforce will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.