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