Sr Director of Design, Firefly

Adobe Design is seeking an AI-native, product-minded design leader to join the team and lead design for Firefly. This role will define the future of AI-powered creativity for creatives and creators, focusing on commercially safe, model-agnostic, and deeply integrated workflow-level experiences that differentiate Firefly in a competitive market.

About the role

This is a hands-on strategic leadership position for someone who thrives in a fast-paced, 0-to-1 product environment. You will own experience outcomes—not just design outputs—by combining product intuition, design craft, competitive fluency, and growth accountability to advance Firefly with speed and conviction. The ideal candidate is a builder who leads builders, driving measurable business impact while pushing the boundaries of AI-native products at scale.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive design strategy for Firefly, tightly coupled to MAU growth, retention, and competitive differentiation, through prioritized, actionable initiatives with measurable goals.
• Bring a clear, defensible point of view on which problems to solve, how to differentiate at the workflow level (Home, Boards, Mobile, Studio), and how design decisions map to business levers.
• Drive fast, data-informed decision-making with clear experimentation loops, balancing intuition-led patterns with a test-and-learn approach grounded in user data, competitive analysis, and growth metrics.
• Personally lead regular design reviews to raise the quality bar across Firefly surfaces, own workflow cohesion, and proactively address UI debt while instituting practices to prevent it.
• Increase execution speed by making decisions in the room, unblocking teams quickly, and creating clear pathways forward rather than surfacing blockers without solutions.
• Guide non-designer builders (PMs, engineers experimenting with AI-generated UI) to shape explorations into coherent, high-quality user experiences.
• Serve as a decisive, strategic thought partner with Product Management, Engineering, Data Science, and Research leaders, leading alignment conversations rather than delegating them.
• Work with other design leaders responsible for Firefly’s agentic experiences and those contributing to the Firefly charter through dotted-line relationships to build tighter cross-functional rhythms for faster decision-making and clearer accountability.
• Navigate Adobe’s matrixed organization with agility, driving incremental, decisive progress and reliably communicating decisions made in leadership forums to the design team.
• Present frequently to SVPs, VPs, Senior Directors, and executive teams with exceptional executive presence, influencing senior stakeholders through compelling storytelling and evidence-based design rationale.
• Hire, grow, and retain exceptional designers, developing team members who think in terms of growth, competitive differentiation, and data alongside design craft.
• Foster an inclusive, empowering environment where feedback flows openly, ambiguity leads to clarity, and the team stays focused on delivering impact.
• Maintain continuous competitive fluency, identifying workflow-level differentiation opportunities and articulating them to the team and cross-functional partners.
• Stay hands-on with emerging AI tools, methods, and processes, championing and scaling the use of AI-assisted design and coding tools within the team to accelerate output and experimentation.

Requirements

• Proven experience leading and managing design teams at the Senior Director level or above, including managing multiple levels of managers, with a track record of inspiring teams to act on behalf of better user and business outcomes.
• Demonstrated history of driving product experience strategy, interaction design, and craft for v1 or early-stage products, owning experience outcomes (activation, adoption, engagement, retention) beyond design deliverables.
• Deep, hands-on experience building AI-native or generative AI product experiences, with a strong understanding of the design patterns, constraints, and opportunities unique to AI-powered workflows.
• Ability to collaborate with and influence multiple SVPs, VPs, and Senior Directors, with exceptional executive presence and storytelling skills to lead alignment where gaps exist.
• Proven ability to navigate highly matrixed organizations, working across multiple teams, functions, and structures with decisiveness and clarity.
• Superb visual and interaction design sensibility, with extensive knowledge of user-centered design principles, information architecture, and UX/UI methodologies, actively raising the bar for craft excellence.
• Excellent written, oral, presentation, and storytelling skills to sell design strategy to senior leadership and drive alignment through compelling narratives and evidence.
• Demonstrated ability to provide calm, focused direction during periods of ambiguity and organizational change, filtering complexity for your team rather than amplifying it.

About Adobe Design

Adobe Design is the multidisciplinary, global organization behind Adobe experiences. The 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.

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.

Pay

The U.S. pay range for this position is $188,600–$385,900 annually, varying by work location and job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. In California, the pay range is $248,200–$385,900. For sales roles, starting salaries are expressed as total target compensation (TTC = base + commission), with short-term incentives in the form of sales commission plans. For non-sales roles, starting salaries are expressed as base salary, with short-term incentives in the form of the Annual Incentive Plan (AIP). Certain roles may also be eligible for long-term incentives in the form of a new hire equity award.