Peter Qian

Senior Director, AutoCAD

Salt Lake City Metropolitan Area

About

Senior technology and business leader with 20+ years of experience building and scaling industry-leading CAD products, and graphics platforms used by millions worldwide. Proven track record of driving strategy, aligning cross-functional stakeholders, and delivering large-scale 2D and 3D products from vision to execution. Brings broad leadership experience across Autodesk’s Manufacturing, AEC, and platform organizations, with a strong ability to navigate complex enterprises and translate business priorities into impactful technical roadmaps. Recognized for combining deep technical expertise with strong business acumen - partnering closely with product, design, and executive leadership to accelerate innovation, improve customer outcomes, and drive growth. Trusted communicator with executive presence, known for building alignment and leading high-performing, globally distributed teams. Expertise spans cloud platforms, distributed systems, computer graphics, and 2D/3D geometry, with a focus on AI-enabled products, platform modernization, and organizational scalability. U.S. patent holder.

Experience

  • Autodesk (18 yrs 6 mos)
    • Senior Director, AutoCAD
      Apr 2026 - Present · 4 mos

      Global business leader responsible for driving growth, customer satisfaction, and execution of AutoCAD product development.

    • Director of Software Engineering, AutoCAD
      Aug 2022 - Apr 2026 · 3 yrs 9 mos

      Global engineering leader for AutoCAD. Leading a high-performing and world-class engineering org with 100+ talented engineers/leaders across North America, Asia and Europe for Autodesk's biggest product line.

    • Senior Software Development Manager, Large Model Viewer & AutoCAD
      Jun 2018 - Jul 2022 · 4 yrs 2 mos

      Led the engineering organization responsible for AutoCAD desktop products, AutoCAD Web (web.autocad.com), and foundational platform technologies including the Forge 2D/3D web viewer (viewer-rocks.autodesk.io) and Autodesk Cloud Rendering (autodesk.com/products/rendering/overview). Driving innovation across 2D and 3D computer graphics systems to power both desktop and cloud-native design experiences.

  • Software Engineer, Compiler, Software Solutions Group at Intel Corporation
    Jun 2006 - Feb 2008 · 1 yr 9 mos

    US Patent - Storage and retrieval of concurrent query language execution results https://patents.google.com/patent/US8606757B2 Responsible for the Xpath compiler and processor in Intel XML software suite

  • Research Assistant at IBM
    Aug 2003 - May 2006 · 2 yrs 10 mos

    Research interests cover semantic web, database, etc in IBM research US patent - Database query language transformation method, transformation apparatus and database query system https://patents.google.com/patent/US20090094216A1/en IBM Research Lab - XML database, Semantic web and ontology.

  • Research Assistant at Microsoft
    Aug 2002 - Jul 2003 · 1 yr

    Microsoft Research Asia - Computer graphics, specifically about the photorealism in rendering using BRDF (Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function) for cases like tree leaf rendering.

  • Information Technology System Engineer at Boston Consulting Group (BCG)
    Jul 2001 - Jul 2002 · 1 yr 1 mo

    Ensuring the consulting business runs on secure and reliable information systems.