Lead Applied Researcher

About this role

Lead Applied Researcher, AI Foundations- Adobe Express Location: San Jose, CA / Seattle, WA

The Opportunity Adobe Express empowers users to seamlessly construct striking designs, whether they are novices or experienced engineers, on a user-friendly platform improved by groundbreaking AI capabilities. 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 crafting the future of creativity, solving complex engineering challenges, and delivering scalable AI solutions that redefine what is possible in design!

What You'll Do

• Build innovative machine learning models that drive Agentic and other Generative AI scenarios for Adobe Express • Lead and mentor a small team of applied researchers, providing technical direction and encouraging a strong culture of innovation and experimentation. • Contribute to foundational AI systems for intelligent assistance, layout automation, image generation, and motion storytelling. • Design and build modular, reusable components that integrate with the Horizon AI Stack and scale across multiple creative workflows. • Own the ML lifecycle—from ideation and prototyping to evaluation and deployment. • Drive collaboration with Adobe Research, product, and platform teams to translate ideas into production-ready capabilities. • Define and implement evaluation strategies using a combination of automated metrics, LLM based judges, and user feedback •

Basic Qualifications • Masters, or PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Data Science, Machine Learning, or a related field with equivalent experience. • 7+ years of industry experience in machine learning and product development related to AI. • Demonstrated experience mentoring or technically guiding other researchers or engineers. • Strong programming skills and proficiency in ML frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX. • Experience with modern ML architectures including transformers / visual transformers, diffusion models, or GANs. • Experience with cloud platforms, MLOps and deploying ML systems in production at scale. • Be able to quickly read, understand and prototype relevant research papers.

Preferred Qualifications • Experience with Large Language Models and model adaptation techniques (Ex: PEFT, SFT, RL etc.) • Familiarity with agent-based systems, intelligent assistants, or planner-based AI. • Experience in creative, imaging, or multimedia domains. • Publications in renowned ML/CV/AI conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, CVPR, ICML, SIGGRAPH).

What You Need to Succeed • Be a leader with a point of view and a passion for creativity, striving to improve solutions. • Be up to date with the latest and greatest in AI Research. • Comfortable working in a fast, iterative and ambiguous environment. • Strong communication skills with the ability to explain technical ideas and experiment results clearly. • Collaborative spirit with a focus on product impact, AI / ML innovation and engineering excellence.

About Adobe 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 GenStudio 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. 

Let’s Adobe together At Adobe, we believe in creating a company culture where all employees are empowered to make an impact. Learn more about Adobe life, including our values and culture , focus on people, purpose and community , Adobe for All , comprehensive benefits programs , the stories we tell , the customers we serve, and how you can help us advance our mission of empowering everyone to create.

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. Learn more.

Adobe aims to make our Careers website and recruiting process accessible to any and all users. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation to navigate our website or complete the application process, email accommodations@adobe.com or call +1 408-536-3015. 

AI Use Guidelines for Interviews: 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 .   Expected Pay Range: 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 $182,900 -- $352,350 annually. Pay within this range varies by work location an

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