Architect & Lead Engineer, ML Engineering - AI Foundations, Adobe Express

Our Company

Changing the world through digital experiences is what Adobe's all about. We give everyone-from emerging artists to global brands-everything they need to design and deliver exceptional digital experiences! We're passionate about empowering people to create beautiful and powerful images, videos, and apps, and transform how companies interact with customers across every screen.

We're on a mission to hire the very best and are committed to creating exceptional employee experiences where everyone is respected and has access to equal opportunity. We realize that new ideas can come from everywhere in the organization, and we know the next big idea could be yours!

The Opportunity

Adobe Express empowers users to seamlessly construct impressive designs, regardless of their experience level, using an intuitive platform improved by innovative AI features. The AI Foundations team sits at the core of this vision, driving innovation to make Adobe Express smarter, faster, and more adaptive. By developing modular, reusable AI systems and crafting a robust Horizon AI Stack, this team will play a pivotal role in transforming creative workflows. Joining this team means shaping the future of creativity, solving complex engineering challenges, and delivering scalable AI solutions that redefine what's possible in design.

What You'll Do

• Design and lead large-scale, modular ML engineering architecture optimized for AI-driven creative workflows.
• Architect multi-tier service layers supporting low-latency REST APIs, asynchronous workflows, and scalable orchestration for AI pipelines.
• Build real-time and batch data pipelines for ingesting and processing creative, behavioral, and multimodal data at scale using technologies like Kafka, Spark, Flink, and cloud-native data lakes.
• Lead infrastructure for training, evaluating, and serving advanced ML models, ensuring reusability, traceability, and cost efficiency.
• Develop and evolve the modular AI stack that powers foundation models, embedding engines, semantic search, model routing, and generative APIs.
• Optimize infrastructure for performance, observability, reliability, and continuous integration/deployment of AI capabilities.
• Collaborate with ML researchers, applied scientists, and product teams to operationalize novel models into robust, high-availability systems.
• Mentor engineers, establish engineering standards, and help define long-term architectural direction.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Data Science, or a related technical field.
• 10+ years of engineering experience, including 5+ years building infrastructure for ML/AI systems at scale.
• Strong track record of designing and deploying N-tier service architectures, distributed systems, and backend platforms.
• Deep experience with streaming data frameworks (e.g., Kafka, Spark, Flink) and cloud-scale data lakes.
• Advanced proficiency in Python and at least one systems language (Java, Go, Scala).
• Strong understanding of MLOps workflows, container orchestration (Kubernetes), and AI/ML tooling (e.g., Airflow, MLFlow, Ray, SageMaker, Databricks).

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with retrieval and ranking systems, vector databases, or search pipelines.
• Hands-on exposure to generative models, LLMs, or multimodal ML model serving and orchestration.
• Background in building reusable ML platform components used by multi-functional teams.
• Ability to influence cross-org architecture decisions and drive alignment on scalable patterns.
• Passion for building infrastructure that enables AI-powered creativity and innovation.

What You Need to Succeed

• Strategic problem solver with deep systems knowledge and a bias toward action.
• Proven leadership in high-scale architectural initiatives across ML and engineering domains.
• Collaborative approach and strong communication skills across technical and product audiences.
• Attention to operational excellence-resiliency, observability, developer experience, and iteration speed.
• Curiosity and passion for building elegant infrastructure that unlocks creative potential for millions.

At Adobe, for sales roles starting salaries are expressed as total target compensation (TTC = base + commission), and short-term incentives are in the form of sales commission plans. Non-sales roles starting salaries are expressed as base salary and short-term incentives are in the form of the Annual Incentive Plan (AIP).

In addition, certain roles may be eligible for long-term incentives in the form of a new hire equity award.

State-Specific Notices:

California:

Fair Chance Ordinances

Adobe will consider qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records for employment in accordance with state and local laws and "fair chance" ordinances.

Colorado:

Application Window Notice

If this role is open to hiring in Colorado (as listed on the job posting), the application window will remain open until at least the date and time stated above in Pacific Time, in compliance with Colorado pay transparency regulations. If this role does not have Colorado listed as a hiring location, no specific application window applies, and the posting may close at any time based on hiring needs.

Massachusetts:

Massachusetts Legal Notice

It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.

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