Manager, Forward Deployed AI Engineering

Overview

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 are passionate about empowering people to create beautiful and powerful images, videos, and apps, and transform how companies interact with customers across every screen.

We are committed to creating exceptional employee experiences where everyone is respected and has access to equal opportunity. The next big idea could be yours.

The Opportunity

Join our "Dev Ops for Content" revolution, where we partner with global brands and agencies to transform their end-to-end creative workflows—from ideation through activation—to unlock the GenAI-powered Content Supply Chain.

As a Manager, Forward Deployed AI Engineering, you will lead, mentor, and inspire a team of Forward Deployed AI Engineers (FDEs)—creative technologists who prototype, build, and launch GenAI-powered solutions and products directly with customers. Your mission is to cultivate top engineering talent, instill a culture of rapid innovation and delivery excellence, and ensure every engagement drives measurable business impact.

This role requires strong, hands-on technical leadership, people mentorship, and the ability to scale GenAI adoption in enterprise environments. You will partner with the Director, Forward Deployed AI Engineering, to build a world-class product engineering organization with customer-facing DNA.

What You'll Do

• Team Leadership

• Recruit, coach, and empower a high-performing team of Forward Deployed AI Engineers (and select Forward Deployed AI Architects).

• Act as both mentor and peer, reviewing code, shaping architectures, and guiding engineers on technical depth, delivery velocity, and customer impact.

• Cultivate a culture of engineering excellence, experimentation, and AI tinkering, ensuring the team stays at the frontier of generative AI and enterprise delivery.

• Develop future leaders by strengthening technical judgment, customer-facing confidence, and cross-functional influence.

• Customer Engagement & Technical Delivery

• Sponsor and engage directly in strategic customer programs—design, prototype, and launch solutions and products with your engineers when escalations or critical milestones arise.

• Ensure your teams apply Forward Deployed Engineering principles: embedded collaboration, rapid prototyping, iterative feedback, and production-grade handoffs.

• Serve as the escalation point for technical and delivery challenges, balancing innovation with governance, reliability, and scale.

• Champion delivery excellence—every engagement must tie back to measurable value realization and customer adoption.

• Technical Leadership & Standards

• Define and enforce engineering standards across pods, including CI/CD pipelines, reusable frameworks, architecture playbooks, and model governance practices.

• Partner with Directors of Forward Deployed Engineering and Architecture to align technical approaches across the org and codify patterns into scalable, reusable assets.

• Funnel field-proven innovations and best practices into Adobe Firefly and Gen Studio roadmaps—ensuring product strategy is shaped by customer reality.

• Thought Leadership & Cross-Team Enablement

• Stay at the forefront of generative AI, creative automation, and enterprise integration—keeping your teams current and inspired.

• Foster internal knowledge sharing—publishing playbooks, reusable modules, and lessons learned that accelerate the entire organization.

• Represent your team in customer workshops, internal reviews, and external forums, showcasing the engineering craft and thought leadership of the FDE org.

What You Bring

• Technical Credibility - 5+ years of software engineering, AI/ML, or technical consulting experience, with recent hands-on development in full-stack, cloud, and GenAI applications. You can dive into code, architecture, or delivery sprints when needed.

• People Leadership - 3+ years in people management or technical team leadership, with a proven ability to mentor, coach, and grow engineers and architects into top-tier…