Sr Design Engineer, Spectrum Desktop

Drover is the framework behind many of Adobe's flagship desktop applications. It is the foundation that powers the user interface of some of the most widely used software Adobe ships, from Photoshop to Illustrator to Premiere Pro to After Effects and more.

We're looking for a Senior Design Engineer to work on Drover. This is a high-ownership systems role focused on modernizing how Adobe's desktop products are built, and how they look and feel. You will influence the technical implementation and ongoing support of Adobe's design system, Spectrum, defining how designs come to life across our desktop UI.

This is a unique opportunity to innovate. Bringing a modern design system to a high-performance native framework raises genuinely interesting problems, and we want someone to go deep on them: layout and adaptive sizing, animation and motion, compositing and rendering, theming, and the performance work that makes all of it feel amazing.

If you care about the craft of building beautiful, fast, native user experiences we'd love to meet you.

- Modernize Drover's UI foundations for fast, polished, native experiences

- Shape framework capabilities, APIs, and abstractions that help product teams ship UI faster and more consistently

- Prototype, validate, and ship new UI capabilities through close collaboration

- Build automation, validation, and performance systems that make quality measurable at scale

- Participate in design and code reviews, helping set the standard for UI craft

- Use AI-assisted tools thoughtfully while maintaining high standards for correctness, performance, and quality

- 5+ years of software engineering experience, with deep production C++ expertise

- Strong systems-design experience, including framework or platform architecture

- Depth in at least one UI framework area, such as layout, animation, rendering, theming, or performance

- Experience building cross-platform software for Windows and macOS

- A track record of solving complex technical problems while keeping software fast, reliable, and maintainable

- Design sensibility, strong communication skills, and experience developing alignment across design and engineering teams

- Experience with Objective-C, JavaScript/TypeScript, Python are a plus!

Adobe Design is the multidisciplinary, global organization behind Adobe experiences. Our full-stack team includes design researchers, design engineers, experience designers, brand designers, content strategists, and program managers dedicated to delivering exceptional experiences for Adobe users.

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 $139,000 -- $257,550 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 $177,900 - $257,550 In Washington, the pay range for this position is $161,700 - $234,150