Principal Architect, Express AI Foundations

Adobe Express enables all users, whether individuals or large organizations, to effortlessly produce impressive content. The AI Foundations team constructs a flexible, scalable AI framework that drives creativity at scale in design, imaging, motion, and personalization.

We're looking for a Principal Architect to build and implement the AI framework for Adobe Express, merging strong ML skills with proficiency in distributed systems, data architecture, and large-scale service development.

You'll define and invent the end-to-end foundation that brings Agentic AI, Create AI, Imaging AI, Motion AI, and Personalization AI to life - spanning model orchestration, inference systems, data pipelines, caching and storage layers, session analytics, and continuous evaluation frameworks.

This role blends applied research and engineering leadership - ideal for someone who can connect modeling innovation with production-grade systems that deliver real-time, customer-facing intelligence at scale.

- Architect and evolve the complete AI stack for Adobe Express - covering Agentic AI, Construct AI, Imaging AI, Motion AI, and Personalization AI. - Develop and operationalize end-to-end systems - integrating microservices, data pipelines, LLM orchestration layers, in-house and third-party models, databases, caches, session analytics, and evaluation systems into a cohesive architecture. - Develop large-scale data and inference infrastructure to support model training, fine-tuning, evaluation, and deployment - employing Spark, Kafka, Flink, and other distributed frameworks. - Develop high-performance runtime services for inference and orchestration with strong observability, fault tolerance, and latency guarantees. - Apply strong caching and storage tactics to enhance efficiency and cost-effectiveness for various AI workloads. - Lead development of experimentation and evaluation systems, encompassing session-level analytics, feedback loops, and quality metrics that drive continuous improvement. - Work closely with applied research, product, and platform teams to implement LLMs and other AI models into customer-facing services. - Drive architectural strategy for Express AI Foundations - connecting ML models, reasoning engines, and data streams into adaptive, intelligent systems. - Mentor senior engineers and scientists, encouraging excellence across architecture, experimentation, and AI system composition.

- 10+ years of experience in large-scale distributed systems AI infrastructure, or ML platform engineering with exposure and experience on in-product AI application engineering - Proficiency in Python, Java, C++, or Go, with an emphasis on distributed systems, cloud-native deployment, and performance tuning, agentic AI application building. - Hands-on experience with LLM orchestration frameworks, model routing, and multi-model inference. - Deep understanding of ML and LLM fundamentals - training, fine-tuning, deployment, and evaluation workflows. - Familiarity with Agentic AI patterns - reasoning loops, memory persistence, task decomposition, and multi-agent coordination. - Skill to merge engineering precision with practical research understanding, connecting prototyping and production. - Strong communication and collaboration skills, with experience influencing cross-functional technical direction. - Proven expertise in building and scaling data pipelines, real-time streaming systems, and event-driven architectures (Kafka, Spark, Flink, etc.). - Strong background in caching strategies, database development, and performance optimization for large-scale serving systems

- Bachelor's or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Data Science, Machine Learning, or a related technical field. - Experience architecting AI assistants, build agents, or multimodal creative systems. - Exposure to Generative AI (LLMs, diffusion, or multimodal architectures). - Experience with MLOps pipelines, feature stores, and model registries. - Track record of open-source contributions, publications, or conference presentations.

At Adobe, we're crafting the future of creativity through intelligence. The AI Foundations team combines the agility of a startup with the scale and mission of Adobe - constructing the AI stack for Adobe Express, spanning Agentic, Design, Imaging, Motion, and Personalization AI. Join us to develop the infrastructure that brings adaptive, autonomous, and human-centered AI to millions of creators worldwide!

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 $206,400 -- $379,100 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 California, the pay range for this position is $261,800 - $379,100