Forward Deployed AI Engineer

About the Role

You are a player‑coach who leads a team of Forward Deployed AI Engineers and Creative Pipeline Specialists building GenAI‑powered content production systems for the world’s largest brands. You don’t manage from the sidelines — you write code, review PRs, make architecture calls, and unblock your team by rolling up your sleeves. Your technical credibility is your management tool.

You’ve worked at an agency, a creative studio, or a MarTech company where content gets made at scale, so you understand the customer’s world from the inside. Now you’re leading the team that transforms those workflows with AI.

Your team is the core of Adobe’s Forward Deployed Engineering org. You own delivery outcomes, team performance, and technical quality across multiple customer engagements simultaneously. You build a team that ships fast, operates with high autonomy, and compounds every engagement into reusable capability. You elevate your team through clarity, judgment, and technical depth — not process, not status reports, not overhead.

Responsibilities

• Lead by building: contribute directly to production systems — writing code, reviewing architecture, debugging deployments — especially when progress or clarity depends on it (minimum 30 % of your time is technical work).
• Own delivery outcomes: drive end‑to‑end delivery across multiple customer engagements; scope work, sequence delivery, remove blockers early, and make fast trade‑offs between speed, scope, and quality.
• Grow a high‑performing team: recruit, develop, and retain exceptional AI engineers; set a high bar for performance; give direct, actionable feedback; build a culture of ownership, speed, and trust.
• Set technical direction: guide architecture decisions, enforce engineering standards, and ensure the team builds scalable, reusable systems; define what “production‑ready” means.
• Drive the product feedback loop: turn field‑proven patterns into actionable product roadmap input; ensure insights from the field reach the product builders.
• Scale the org, not just headcount: codify what works into playbooks, shared tooling, and reusable frameworks; build internal capabilities that make every subsequent engagement faster.
• Represent the org externally: showcase the team’s work at customer workshops, internal reviews, and industry forums; publish, speak, and build the reputation of FDE as a world‑class engineering org.

Requirements

• Continue to write code: production‑grade code (Python, TypeScript/Node.js, React, or equivalent); debug deployments, review PRs with real feedback, and make targeted IC contributions when needed.
• Engineering management track record: 3+ years managing high‑performing engineering teams (8+ total years in software engineering); hired strong engineers, grew careers, managed performance, and built teams that ship; led through ambiguity and delivered under pressure.
• Hands‑on GenAI experience: built or deployed AI‑powered systems — LLM integrations, RAG pipelines, agent frameworks, or equivalent; understand how model behavior shapes product experience; make informed architecture decisions about agents, fine‑tuning, prompt‑engineering, etc.
• AI‑native operator: use tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, or equivalent daily; built or extended MCP servers, experimented with agentic workflows, or automated team processes with AI; encourage the team to work this way too.
• Creative content supply‑chain experience: built content production systems, MarTech platforms, asset automation tools, or creative workflow technology — ideally at an ad agency, creative studio, or marketing technology company (e.g., Monks, Publicis, R/GA, Accenture Song, WPP, or similar).
• Customer‑facing leadership: worked directly with enterprise customers — running technical workshops, presenting to stakeholders, embedding with client teams; earned trust with both the VP of Creative and the lead engineer; up to 30 % travel to customer sites.
• Startup speed, enterprise judgment: operated in fast‑moving environments without a playbook; make fast, sound decisions under pressure; simplify complexity instead of adding process.

Preferred Qualifications

• Former technical founder, technical director at an agency, or early engineer at a startup who built a product from scratch.
• Built AI‑powered creative production or content automation systems (asset generation, creative workflow orchestration, template‑based production at scale).
• Managed globally distributed teams and know how to build cohesion across time zones.
• Use AI agents to drive your own management workflows — scheduling, prioritization, tracking, reporting.
• Introduced engineering practices (CI/CD, DORA metrics, code quality standards) into organizations that didn’t have them.

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. The next big idea could be yours.