Principal Engineer AIML

JOB LEVEL

M60/P60

Individual Contributor

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!

We’re looking for a Principal Computer Scientist to serve as the technical leader and architect for our next-generation SaaS application. This role is ideal for someone who has deep experience in building and scaling customer-facing software and who can also guide the integration of generative AI and ML technologies into real-world applications. You’ll work with engineering, product, and research teams to define and implement architectural strategies that support both robust application development and intelligent, AI-enhanced features.

You’ll be responsible for identifying and integrating the right generative AI or ML technologies for the job, driving and measuring product improvements, understanding and managing production systems, and improving engineering health.

• Serve as a technical lead and architect, driving the design and implementation of scalable SaaS applications with integrated AI/ML capabilities.

• Partner with engineering and product leaders to align platform architecture with business goals and customer needs.

• Design and evolve application architecture for production readiness, including scalability, reliability, and observability.

• Guide the selection and integration of generative AI and ML technologies (e.g., LLMs, vector databases, fine-tuning frameworks) into application workflows.

• Collaborate with ML research teams to scope and implement fine-tuning or reinforcement learning (RLHF/RLAIF) strategies when needed.

• Provide technical mentorship and leadership across engineering teams.

• 15+ years of experience in full-stack software development, with a strong focus on customer-facing SaaS platforms.

• Proven success in designing and scaling distributed systems and cloud-native applications

• Strong understanding of architectural principles for production systems, scalability, reliability and monitoring.

• Experience integrating generative AI/ML technologies into applications

• Experience with LLM APIs (Azure OpenAI, Amazon Bedrock)

• Understanding of vector search (Elastic Search, Mongo
  
  DB, Pinecone)

• Awareness of fine-tuning techniques (e.g., RLHF, LoRA, PEFT)

• Ability to scope and direct lightweight model customization

• Expert-level proficiency in modern web technologies and component libraries (Lit, React)

• Deep backend engineering experience for highly-scaled, horizontally deployed microservices (Python, NodeJS, Kubernetes)

• Excellent communication and storytelling skills to convey technical vision across teams and leadership.

• Track record of multi-functional collaboration and technical leadership.

Our compensation reflects the cost of labor across several U.S. geographic markets, and we pay differently based on those defined markets. The U.S. pay range for this position is $190,200 -- $351,300 annually. Pay within this range varies by work location and may also depend on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for the job location during the hiring process.

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 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…