Sr. Director - AI & Agentic Platform Engineering

Sr. Director - AI & Agentic Platform Engineering

Full time Two Folsom, San Francisco, CA, US 94105

About Gap Inc.

At Gap Inc., we create culture as much as we create clothes. Our ambition is to become a high-performing house of iconic American brands that shape culture.

Our portfolio—Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic, and Athleta—each brings a distinct point of view to how we show up in the world and serve our customers.

Old Navy democratizes style with quality and value for all. Gap champions originality through essential pieces that celebrate individuality. Banana Republic is rooted in a spirit of discovery, creating modern pieces inspired by craftsmanship and travel. Athleta champions the Power of She through confidence, strength, and movement.

We’re driven by a shared purpose: to bridge gaps—between people, perspectives, and possibilities—to create a better world.

We’re building a team that performs at a high level—people who think boldly, take ownership, and turn ideas into impact. If you’re ready to learn fast and help shape what’s next, you’ll fit right in.

About the role

As a Sr Director - AI & Platform Engineering you are accountable for building and operating the enterprise agent platform that enables every team to safely develop, deploy, and scale AI agents across the organization. Rather than creating agents directly, the focus is on providing the foundational capabilities that make agent development reliable and governable at scale: the agent authoring experience, tool and MCP integrations, context and memory architecture, skills and procedural knowledge management, and the data access model. You also own the runtime infrastructure, including the model gateway that governs all model traffic and the orchestration engine that supports durable, long-running, and human-in-the-loop workflows. Equally important, this role establishes the controls and trust mechanisms that ensure agents operate securely, responsibly, and within defined boundaries. Responsibilities include agent identity and delegated authorization, guardrails and policy enforcement, runtime registry controls, and cost and capacity management. The role also oversees evaluation frameworks, promotion and release gates, observability and tracing, deployment management, and continuous improvement processes. When executed successfully, the platform enables dozens of teams to rapidly ship agents on a standardized, governed path while providing complete transparency into every agent action, including what it did, under whose authority it acted, and what evidence informed its decisions.

What you’ll do

• Define and drive the enterprise agent platform strategy, including architecture, technology choices, and a secure, scalable paved road that accelerates adoption through exceptional developer experience

• Lead delivery of the core agent platform, including the model gateway, orchestration runtime, and context/memory services that enable reliable, governed, and cost-effective agent execution at scale

• Build and operate the trust and quality framework, including evaluations, observability, release gates, performance monitoring, and continuous improvement mechanisms for production agents

• Own platform security, governance, and operational excellence, including agent identity, authorization, policy enforcement, auditability, incident response, SLOs, and cost management

• Partner across Engineering, Security, Data Governance, Google Cloud, and executive leadership to align platform capabilities with business priorities, regulatory requirements, and long-term AI strategy

• Who you are

• Deep expertise in Google Cloud AI services, including Vertex AI, Gemini, model deployment, vector search, and evaluation frameworks for enterprise-scale AI applications

• Strong data platform experience with BigQuery, Spanner, Dataplex, Knowledge Catalog, and governed semantic layers such as Looker/LookML

• Proficiency in cloud-native platform engineering, including Cloud Run, GKE, Terraform, CI/CD pipelines, artifact management, and distributed systems architecture

• Experience with enterprise security and governance, including IAM, workload identity, secrets management, encryption, policy enforcement, and data protection controls

• Knowledge of event-driven and streaming architectures, leveraging technologies such as Pub/Sub, Dataflow, and workflow orchestration platforms

• Expertise in observability and reliability engineering, including logging, tracing, monitoring, OpenTelemetry, SLOs, incident management, and production operations

• Hands-on experience building agent and LLM platforms, including agent frameworks, MCP integrations, interoperability standards, and large-scale model orchestration

• Deep understanding of context, memory, and evaluation systems, including retrieval architectures, memory management, benchmarking, online/offline evaluations, and drift detection

• Strong background in AI safety, guardrails, and inference optimization, including prompt-injection defense, grounding verification, multi-model routing, caching strategies, and cost management

• Proven software engineering and platform leadership experience, including Python and TypeScript/Go development, multi-tenant platform design, durable workflows, authorization architecture, and secure agent operations

• Salary Range: $236,700.00 - $319,500.00

• Employee pay will vary based on factors such as qualifications, experience, skill level, competencies and work location. We will meet minimum wage or minimum of the pay range (whichever is higher) based on city, county and state requirements.

• Benefits at Gap Inc.

• Merchandise discount for our brands: 50% off regular-priced merchandise at Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic and Athleta, and 30% off at Outlet for all employees.

• One of the most competitive Paid Time Off plans in the industry.

• Employees can take up to five “on the clock” hours each month to volunteer at a charity of their choice.

• Extensive 401(k) plan with company matching for contributions up to four percent of an employee’s base pay.

• Employee stock purchase plan.

• Medical, dental, vision and life insurance.

• See more of the benefits we offer.

• Gap Inc. is an equal-opportunity employer and is committed to providing a workplace free from harassment and discrimination. We are committed to recruiting, hiring, training and promoting qualified people of all backgrounds, and make all employment decisions without regard to any protected status. We have received numerous awards for our long-held commitment to equality and will continue to foster a diverse and inclusive environment of belonging. In 2022, we were recognized by Forbes as one of the World's Best Employers and one of the Best Employers for Diversity.

Location

San Francisco, home to our brands and people

San Francisco has always been a hub for artistry and innovation—and for 55 years, it has inspired Gap Inc. as the home of our brands and people. Creativity is woven into our legacy, and we’re proud to continue supporting the local community that fuels it.

Through our partnership with Nest and the Makers United SF program, we’re working to bridge opportunity gaps for local creatives, giving them a platform to showcase their work and thrive. With the right support and visibility, today’s makers could become the next generation of influential talent.

Championing pathways to growth

At Gap Inc., we believe everyone deserves the opportunity to build a brighter future, and we're proud to be recognized as an Employer of Choice by American Opportunity Index.

As one of the largest employers of entry-level talent, we recognize the barriers underrepresented communities face. We're committed to bridging the opportunity gap by providing access to better jobs and creating pathways for growth, empowering our employees to contribute to our legacy—impacting not just retail and fashion, but also shaping culture.

A day in the life with Zac Posen

Step inside a day in the life at Gap Inc. HQ with Vogue and our Creative Director, Zac Posen. This behind-the-scenes gives a peak into a day at 2 Folsom including design meetings, creative reviews, and a stop in San Francisco's iconic Chinatown. Get a glimpse at the creativity, collaboration, and culture of our house of iconic American brands. Learn more

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Location

San Francisco, CA

Brand

AllOld NavyGapBanana RepublicAthletaGap Inc.