Principal Machine Learning Engineer

Firefly Foundry is Adobe's enterprise managed-service offering for custom multimedia generative AI — deep-tuned image, video, and 3D models built on each customer's IP, paired with creative production workflows and a media-intelligence layer, and deployed across new and existing Adobe surfaces and products, including Firefly, Photoshop, Illustrator, Express, Stock, and Premiere.

About the role

We are hiring a Principal Machine Learning Engineer to serve as the technical lead for our GenAI Services area. This is not a model-training or research role — it is the senior-most hands-on engineering authority over how our generative models are architected, optimized, and served at enterprise scale. You will set the inference architecture and technical standards that a growing organization of engineers builds against, co-develop and optimize the inference code that makes those systems fast and cost-efficient, and architect the APIs and product backend that let Adobe's first-party and third-party models reach both internal applications and external plugin integrations. Where the Director owns the multi-year technical strategy, headcount, and company roadmap for the org, you own the architecture, technical depth, and hands-on execution that make that strategy real — spanning multiple engineering teams without owning their people management.

Responsibilities

• Lead the development of core GenAI services and APIs that integrate a wide range of first-party and third-party generative models into Adobe's flagship products.
• Architect ML serving workflows for enterprise-scale model customization, deployment, and ecosystem integration — including externalizable, self-serve fine-tuning flows.
• Co-develop and optimize GPU-accelerated inference pipelines — prioritizing latency, throughput, scalability, and reliability — using tools such as PyTorch, CUDA, Triton, and TensorRT.
• Design and architect the product backend and plugin ecosystem that lets internal applications and external integrations consume Firefly Foundry's model services.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership: guide engineers through architecture, design, implementation, and best practices, and mentor a growing organization of ML engineers.
• Research and evaluate emerging inference and MLOps technologies — serving runtimes, quantization, GPU scheduling — to improve engineering velocity and system performance.
• Lead design reviews and set technical standards, ensuring high reliability and maintainability across systems.
• Drive cross-functional alignment with Product Managers, TPMs, and engineering leaders to define and deliver on the roadmap.
• Foster a culture of technical excellence and continuous improvement across the organization.

What this role owns

• The technical architecture for composing, optimizing, and serving heterogeneous generative model pipelines — LLMs, diffusion and transformer-based image/video models, RAG and retrieval systems, multi-turn agentic flows, and 3D/mesh pipelines — across the GenAI Services area.
• The optimization strategy for inference performance: latency, throughput, and cost-to-serve across model families and GPU fleets.
• The system design standards for pipeline composition, multi-tenant serving, and the product backend/API and plugin surface that integrates first-party and third-party generative models into Adobe's flagship products.
• Technical direction across multiple engineering teams as the principal authority on architecture and design — a cross-team scope, distinct from the Director's org-wide roadmap and management ownership.

Who you will partner with

• Applied Science — to translate research models and emerging techniques into production-grade inference architecture.
• Director, ML Engineering and ML Engineering leadership — to align technical architecture with organizational strategy and priorities.
• Product Managers and TPMs — to define and deliver against the roadmap for GenAI services and APIs.
• Firefly Foundry Studio and AI Platform — to translate creative production workflows into performant services and to align on shared infrastructure and serving primitives.

Requirements

• MS or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field — or equivalent industry experience.
• 8+ years of experience in machine learning engineering, including production-scale deployment and serving — not training or research experimentation.
• 3+ years leading the technical direction of large-scale, GPU-intensive GenAI inference systems — serving, architecture, and optimization.
• Deep experience with inference frameworks and tools such as PyTorch, CUDA, Triton, TensorRT, Nvidia Dynamo, and Python.
• Strong understanding of generative model architectures — diffusion models, transformers, GANs, LLMs — sufficient to make architecture and optimization calls and reason about output quality, in partnership with Applied Science.
• Proven experience architecting multi-model pipelines and serving them behind APIs at enterprise scale.
• Experience designing product backend systems and plugin architectures consumed by internal applications and external integrations.
• Proven success leading cross-functional teams through complex, high-stakes technical initiatives, with a track record of driving alignment in matrixed organizations.
• Excellent communication and technical leadership skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with model serving, orchestration, and GPU resource management in large-scale environments.
• Hands-on expertise in Kubernetes, distributed systems, and MLOps platforms.
• Experience with RAG architectures and multi-turn, agentic conversational systems.
• Experience with quantization, distillation, or other model-optimization techniques for inference.

Pay

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. In California, the pay range is $261,800 - $379,100. In Washington, the pay range is $242,600 - $351,225.