Director of Marketing - Asia-Pacific & Japan

About Us

Axelera AI is not your regular deep-tech company. We are creating the next-generation AI platform to support anyone who wants to help advancing humanity and improve the world around us.

In just five years, we have raised a total of $450 million and have built a world-class team of 250+ employees (including 60+ PhDs with more than 40,000 citations), both remotely from 20 different countries and with offices in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Italy, the UK, headquartered at the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, Netherlands.

We have also launched our Metis™ AI Platform, which achieves a 3-5x increase in efficiency and performance, and have visibility into a strong business pipeline exceeding $100 million.

Our unwavering commitment to innovation has firmly established us as a global industry pioneer.

Are you up for the challenge?

Position Overview

You will be our first Marketing hire in Asia-Pacific, with full-funnel responsibility across Taiwan, Japan, Korea, India, and Southeast Asia — awareness through to pipeline, and the brand that holds it together.

This is a build. There is no regional team waiting for you, no established agency roster, no library of localized content. In your first months you will take the work done globally and make it more relevant locally, but quickly need to be deciding what is led from APAC and what a long term strategy looks like, including (but not limited to): which local partners have the biggest impact globally, what launch looks like in Bangalore versus Tokyo versus Taipei, and how a European company earns credibility with engineering buyers who have never heard of us.

As the first hire, you need to bridge hands-on tactical work with building the strategy Axelera needs for success. Over time, we will hire more people in region, but for now, the best candidate will be excited about seeing and owning the entirety of the marketing funnel locally (with support from your global peers). The split between hands-on and strategic will shift as the region grows, but in year one you should expect to be writing briefs, sitting in booths, and reviewing/editing content yourself.

Key responsibilities:

• Own the APAC marketing plan and budget, and make the case for where regional investment goes

• Run full-funnel programs in-region: demand generation, content, digital, PR, and the events that matter in each market

• Make our positioning land locally — not just translated from English, but written for the engineers and executives who will read it

• Own our presence at regional events, from Computex and SEMICON through to the country-level shows where our customers engage

• Work with the Sales teams in-region so marketing follows the accounts and relationships that matter most

• Feed what you learn back to the global marketing team, and bring global launches into the region properly

• Report on pipeline contribution, and be honest about what is working and what is not

Qualifications

You need these:

• Full-funnel B2B technology marketing experience in APAC, including both strategy and your own hands on the work

• A track record across several of our markets — Taiwan, Japan, Korea, India, Southeast Asia — and a clear view of how differently each one behaves

• Experience selecting, briefing, and managing agencies, with the judgement to know when to outsource and when not to

• Comfort with technical products and technical audiences, ideally in semiconductors, hardware, embedded systems, or infrastructure

Helpful, not required:

• Experience as an early or first marketing hire in a region

• Existing relationships with regional trade press and analysts

• Familiarity with compute ecosystems and how they shape go-to-market

• Professional English plus at least one regional language, with the cultural fluency to review local-language work and catch what is wrong with it

How We Work

You will have real autonomy, and real exposure. Nobody will set your priorities for you or check your calendar. You are also the only marketing voice in the region, which means the strategy is yours to propose and yours to defend. People who have wanted this kind of room for years tend to do the best work of their careers here.

You will use AI every day, and you will know where it should stop. We use it heavily — research, first drafts, analysis, campaign production, anything that buys back hours. We expect you to arrive having already built it into how you work, not planning to start.

We also need you to hold the line on quality. A machine translation into Japanese or Traditional Chinese can read fluently and still be wrong in ways nobody at headquarters can see. A generated case study can be plausible and inaccurate. In a region where we are still earning the right to be taken seriously, that costs us more than it saves. The best person for this role uses AI to produce better work, then applies a standard that protects the brand rather than quietly lowering it.

You will learn a lot. Not marketing — you should arrive knowing that. But this market moves fast and we are here to both shape its future but also lean into it.

What Success Looks Like in Year One

• A regional marketing plan with named priority markets, a budget behind it, and agreement from the business on both

• Working agency relationships in your priority markets, producing material that meets our standard in local languages

• Measurable marketing-sourced and marketing-influenced pipeline in-region, reported consistently

• Axelera present and credible at the regional events that matter to our customers and partners

• A clear recommendation on what the APAC marketing team should look like next

Location

This role is based in India, with a remote setup. Our goal is to hire the best possible talent and let them live where they choose. You should expect to travel roughly 20% of the time across the region, with periodic trips to meet with the global team. Some overlap with European and American working hours comes with the job.

What we offer 

This is your chance to shape and be part of a dynamic, fast-growing, international organization. We offer an attractive compensation package, including a pension plan, extensive employee insurances and the option to get company shares.   

An open culture that supports creativity and continual innovation is awaiting you. Collaborative ownership and freedom with responsibility is characteristic for the way we act and work as a team. 

At Axelera AI, we wholeheartedly embrace equal opportunity and hold diversity in the highest regard. Our steadfast commitment is to cultivate a warm and inclusive environment that empowers and celebrates every member of our team. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds to join us in shaping the future of AI.

Axelera AI may at times work with external parties (such as recruiters, headhunters, or executive search firms) to support both publicly posted and confidential searches. Our hiring process never involves any payment from candidates, and we will never require you to use a particular paid service to be considered for a role. If you have been approached by someone on our behalf and want to confirm it’s legitimate, please contact us directly at [email protected].