Principal Scientist, Foundation Model Understanding Data Architect

About the Role

We are seeking a Principal Scientist (P60) to define and lead the data and semantic architecture that enables Adobe Firefly's next generation unified foundation models
-models that natively combine understanding, reasoning, and generation within a single system. This role sits within the Applied Science and Machine Learning (ASML) organization and operates at the highest level of technical leadership. You will shape how meaning, intent, and abstraction are represented and learned at foundation model scale, influencing multiple generations of models and products. This is a highly strategic individual contributor role with broad organizational impact.

• Define the multiyear vision for understandingcentric data that enables unified comprehension and generation.
• Establish core principles for semantic representation, supervision, and curriculum at foundation model scale.
• Identify limitations in existing data paradigms and drive the invention of new approaches.

• Design canonical semantic abstractions that bridge perception level signals with high level concepts such as intent, reasoning, and compositional structure.
• Lead the evolution of supervision schemas toward rich, model interpretable semantic signals.
• Guide the use of multimodal and vision language models to bootstrap scalable understanding data.

• Define understanding focused data curricula across model scale and training phases.
• Lead ablations to quantify how semantic data choices affect generalization, cont rollability, and robustness.
• Balance organic, synthetic, and model generated data to optimize learning efficiency.

• Serve as the technical authority for foundation model understanding data across Adobe.
• Influence research, infrastructure, and product roadmaps through principled, data driven guidance.
• Mentor senior scientists and architects; set standards for rigor and reproducibility.

• 10+ years of experience in ML, data systems, or AI research, including leadership on large scale or foundation models.
• Demonstrated impact shaping data, learning paradigms, or representations for LLMs or multimodal models.
• Deep expertise in semantic representation, reasoning, and abstraction.
• Strong intuition for interactions between data, model architecture, and training dynamics.
• Ability to influence senior technical and business leaders through clear technical judgment.

• Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, AI, or a related field strongly preferred.

Adobe empowers everyone to create through innovative platforms and tools that unleash creativity, productivity and personalized customer experiences. Adobe's industry‑leading offerings including Adobe Acrobat Studio, Adobe Express, Adobe Firefly, Creative Cloud, Adobe Experience Platform, Adobe Experience Manager, and Gen Studio enable people and businesses to turn ideas into impact, powered by AI and driven by human ingenuity.

Our 30,000+ employees worldwide are creating the future and raising the bar as we drive the next decade of growth. We're on a mission to hire the very best and believe in creating a company culture where all employees are empowered to make an impact. At Adobe, we believe that great ideas can come from anywhere in the organization. The next big idea could be yours.

Adobe is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based on gender, race or color, ethnicity or national origin, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic.

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Our interviews are designed to reflect your own skills and thinking. The use of AI or recording tools during live interviews is not permitted unless explicitly invited by the interviewer or approved in advance as part of a reasonable accommodation. If these tools are used inappropriately or in a way that misrepresents your work, your application may not move forward in the process.

At Adobe, we empower employees to innovate with AI – and we look for candidates eager to do the same. As part of the hiring experience, we provide clear guidance on where AI is encouraged during the process and where it's restricted during live interviews. See how we think about AI in the hiring experience.

The U.S. pay range for this position is $206,300 -- $388,000 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. In…