VP, Product (AI & Search) - Slack

Salesforce•San Francisco, CA

About The Position

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. 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.

Requirements

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

Nice To Haves

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

Responsibilities

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

Benefits

Salesforce offers a variety of benefits to help you live well including: time off programs, medical, dental, vision, mental health support, paid parental leave, life and disability insurance, 401(k), and an employee stock purchasing program.
More details about company benefits can be found at the following link: https://www.salesforcebenefits.com.

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