Distinguished Engineer

Autodesk•San Francisco, CA

2d•$196,000 - $352,110

About The Position

As a Distinguished Engineer, you will serve as a hands-on technical leader driving the next generation of Product Access capabilities, including entitlements, licensing, and access enforcement across cloud and AI-powered products. You will define and help execute the long-term technical vision for Product Access platforms across Autodesk’s product ecosystem, enabling scalable and intelligent access to capabilities for both human and non-human actors, including services, automations, and AI agents. This role combines deep technical expertise with the ability to influence engineering direction through implementation, mentorship, innovation, and company-wide technical leadership. You will play a critical role in accelerating strategic initiatives, incubating greenfield capabilities, and modernizing engineering practices through AI-assisted software development workflows. You will operate across organizational boundaries to drive alignment, influence platform adoption, and help teams converge on scalable Product Access solutions that serve long-term company goals. Success in this role requires strong technical judgment, the ability to influence without direct authority, and a pragmatic approach to balancing local team needs with broader platform and business priorities. This role is expected to drive outcomes with impact across multiple product organizations and strategic company initiatives. This role is ideal for a deeply technical leader who wants to combine hands-on engineering, platform innovation, and AI-driven development practices to shape the future of how products are built and accessed. You will help define both the Product Access platform capabilities and the engineering practices that enable the next generation of cloud and AI-powered experiences—while influencing technical direction and engineering strategy across the company at enterprise scale.

Requirements

12+ years of experience building large-scale distributed systems and platform services
Strong hands-on software engineering background with the ability to contribute directly to architecture, design, and implementation
Proven experience building or evolving: Product Access platforms
Entitlement and licensing systems
Usage-based or consumption-driven services
Deep expertise in: Cloud-native architectures
Distributed systems design
Microservices and API design
Scalability, reliability, and operational excellence
Recognized technical expertise in distributed systems, platform engineering, or Product Access architectures
Demonstrated ability to shape engineering direction through technical vision, innovation, and influence
Strong experience driving engineering productivity improvements through modern tooling and developer platform investments
Practical experience leveraging AI-assisted software development workflows and tools such as Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or similar technologies in real-world engineering environments
Familiarity with AI-enabled product patterns, agentic workflows, and API-driven consumption models
Proven ability to influence technical strategy and drive alignment across multiple organizations without direct authority
Strong executive communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to navigate complex organizational and technical tradeoffs
Demonstrated ability to balance short-term delivery pressures with long-term platform and architectural sustainability
Strong product and business acumen, with the ability to align technical decisions with customer and business outcomes

Nice To Haves

Experience with SaaS licensing and entitlement models
Experience building platform services used across multiple engineering organizations
Exposure to developer platforms, internal tooling, or engineering productivity initiatives
Experience with Kubernetes, event-driven architectures, and modern cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
Exposure to AI/ML-enabled products and modern AI application architectures
Experience driving enterprise-scale platform adoption and technical convergence initiatives

Responsibilities

Lead the design and implementation of scalable Product Access and entitlement systems supporting cloud, API, and AI-driven products
Define and drive the long-term technical strategy and engineering vision for Product Access platforms and access enforcement capabilities
Drive the development of greenfield initiatives and foundational platform capabilities through hands-on prototyping and implementation
Serve as a technical accelerator across teams by contributing directly to critical projects and resolving complex engineering challenges
Champion adoption of AI-assisted software development practices, including effective use of tools such as Claude Code to improve engineering productivity, software quality, and delivery velocity
Establish best practices for integrating AI-assisted workflows into software design, implementation, testing, and operational support
Design systems supporting access decisions for both human and non-human actors, including services, automations, and AI agents
Lead the evolution of entitlement and licensing platforms to support subscription, usage-based, and emerging AI-driven consumption models
Build highly scalable, low-latency, and resilient distributed systems with strong operational excellence
Influence technical direction across multiple engineering organizations to drive adoption of shared platform capabilities, standards, and engineering practices
Build strong partnerships across engineering, product, security, and business teams while constructively challenging decisions when needed to ensure long-term scalability and company-wide alignment
Act as a company-level technical leader, making decisions and recommendations based on what delivers the greatest overall customer and business impact
Partner deeply with Product Management to shape product capabilities, monetization models, platform evolution, and long-term strategy
Mentor engineers through hands-on collaboration, code reviews, architecture guidance, and technical leadership
Evaluate emerging technologies and translate them into practical engineering capabilities and strategic advantages for the organization
Influence engineering culture by promoting simplicity, developer experience, operational excellence, scalable architectures, and high-quality execution