Director, Chief of Staff - AutoCAD, Building, and Infrastructure Solutions

26WD100159

Position Overview

Autodesk is enabling people to design and make a better world.  The Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) sector has several product development organizations, including AutoCAD, Building, and Infrastructure Solutions (ABI).  This product portfolio includes industry leading products like AutoCAD, Revit, Civil 3D, InfoWorks ICM, InfoDrainage, ReCap Pro, Info360, InfraWorks, and other products serving the AEC sector.  The organization includes product mgmt., development, QA, DevOps, and program mgmt.  We are a customer-focused engineering organization that measures success based on customer adoption, product satisfaction, and innovation.

The Director, Chief of Staff is the strategic adviser and operating partner to the ABI leadership team, and reports to the Vice President. The role increases the effectiveness of the VP, the ABI Leadership Team, and the broader organization by improving decision quality, portfolio alignment, execution velocity and organizational health. This position manages a small team of business operations and program management professionals.

In this role, you will work with leaders across ABI and Autodesk to translate strategy into clear priorities, investment choices, accountabilities, and measurable outcomes. You will identify emerging risks and dependencies, lead selected cross-organizational initiatives, strengthen leadership-team effectiveness, and ensure that important decisions are understood and acted upon throughout the organization.

Responsibilities

• Partner with the VP and ABI Leadership Team to shape multi-year strategy, annual priorities and portfolio investment decisions. Frame complex problems, develop fact-based options, challenge assumptions and recommend clear courses of action

• Integrate customer, market, product, financial, people and operational insights into concise recommendations to support leadership decisions. Ensure that investment decisions include explicit trade-offs, resource implications and success measures

• Strengthen the effectiveness, cohesion and trust of the ABI Leadership Team. Create an environment in which leaders surface risks early, engage in constructive conflict and make clear, timely decisions

• Use employee insights, business performance and operational signals to identify organizational barriers and recommend interventions

• Support organizational and operating-model changes and objectives, performance metrics and key results

• Run leadership meetings, including formulating topics to cover, facilitating the discussion, capturing key takeaways and following up.  This includes quarterly offsites, monthly strategic, weekly tactical, and other leadership meetings

• Translate strategy and decisions into communications that explain what is changing, why it is changing, what will continue and what will stop

• Prepare and support the VP in executive reviews, employee engagements, customer meetings, industry events and other high-impact forums

• Author communications for the ABI VP, including announcements, presentations, blogs, etc

• When appropriate, represent ABI in cross-company efforts, including standing in for the VP

• Own and manage selected strategic initiatives as a lead program and project manager that span ABI product groups, functions or Autodesk organizations

• Maintain portfolio-level visibility into progress, risks, dependencies and capacity constraints, and drive timely escalation and resolution

• Ensure that significant decisions clearly document the rationale, alternatives considered, trade-offs, stopped or deferred work, accountable owner and expected outcome

• Identify opportunities to reuse platforms, capabilities and operating practices across teams and reduce duplication or local optimization

• Utilize the latest AI capabilities and models to improve operational efficiency across the org – reducing duplicated work and automating regular processes

• Lead, develop and prioritize the ABI business operations and program management team. Provide coaching and career development support to direct reports

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, Architecture, or related field; or related experience; Master’s degree preferred

• 10 years of experience within the software development industry, preferably within product management or development organizations.   Experience in architecture, engineering, construction preferred

• Demonstrated success leading large, complex, transformational programs

• Strategic thinker with ability to define the problem statement, assess options, recommend solutions, solicit perspectives, and drive to a decision

• Strong inter-personal skills, comfort negotiating with stakeholders, knowing when to push vs. allow additional time

• Excellent written and oral communication skills.  Ability to convey complex concepts concisely and effectively across multiple levels including executive leadership team, peers, managers and junior staff; and externally with customers and partners

• Skills to guide and direct objectives at meetings, strategic planning sessions, quarterly business reviews, etc

• Experience creating operating systems, including decision processes, portfolio reviews, objective-setting, performance management and executive forums

• Ability to gather data, analyze, visualize, and structure fact-based recommendations

• Understanding of how companies are using AI to improve operational efficiency. Good understanding of context engineering to support in automating repetitive processes

• ABI is a global organization with major sites in San Francisco, Boston, Vancouver, Toronto, Shanghai, Singapore, Bucharest, Krakow, and London.  Travel expectations would be approximately 25%, visiting our sites, attending leadership offsites, participating in Autodesk and industry conferences, and meeting with customers & partners

The Ideal Candidate

• You quickly understand complex business, product, and organizational challenges, bring structure to ambiguity, and use sound judgment to develop clear recommendations. You are comfortable challenging senior leaders constructively, offering alternative perspectives, and helping a leadership team make timely, well-informed decisions

• You know how to translate broad priorities into clear outcomes, ownership, milestones, and measures of success. You identify risks, dependencies, and competing priorities early, make trade-offs visible, and bring the right people together to move complex, cross-organizational initiatives forward

• You build trusted relationships across product, engineering, design, business functions, and geographically distributed teams. You can reconcile different perspectives, facilitate constructive debate, and create alignment without relying on formal authority

• You communicate complex topics clearly and confidently with employees, executives, customers, and partners. You have experience engaging with customers professionally and representing the company in customer meetings and external forums, adapting your message to the audience while protecting the company’s interests and reputation

Learn More

About Autodesk

Welcome to Autodesk! Amazing things are created every day with our software – from the greenest buildings and cleanest cars to the smartest factories and biggest hit movies. We help innovators turn their ideas into reality, transforming not only how things are made, but what can be made.

We take great pride in our culture here at Autodesk – it’s at the core of everything we do. Our culture guides the way we work and treat each other, informs how we connect with customers and partners, and defines how we show up in the world.

When you’re an Autodesker, you can do meaningful work that helps build a better world designed and made for all. Ready to shape the world and your future? Join us!

Salary transparency

Salary is one part of Autodesk’s competitive compensation package. For Canada based roles, we expect a starting base salary between $180,500 and $248,160. Offers are based on the candidate’s experience and geographic location, and may exceed this range. In addition to base salaries, our compensation package may include annual cash bonuses, commissions for sales roles, stock grants, and a comprehensive benefits package.

Belonging
We take pride in cultivating a culture of belonging where everyone can thrive. Learn more here: https://www.autodesk.com/company/global-belonging

In-Person Onboarding and Identity Verification

This role may require in-person onboarding and/or in-person ID verification.

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