AI Software Architect, Forward Deployed

The Role You are the technical spine of Adobe's Forward Deployed Engineering org. You own system design, platform standards, and the technical relationship with our largest enterprise customers — from C-level executives to their engineering teams. You don't just advise; you write production code, set the architecture, and ensure every engagement builds durable capability — not throwaway consulting artifacts. You'll work directly with global brands transforming their content supply chains with generative AI. You'll design end-to-end GenAI systems — from RAG pipelines and agent orchestration to production-grade API integrations — and establish the reusable patterns and frameworks that make every subsequent engagement faster. You are the person who ensures this org operates like a product engineering team, not a services shop. You set the technical bar for everyone around you. What You'll Do Own system architecture end-to-end. Design production GenAI applications from prototype through scale — data pipelines, model orchestration, API integrations, infrastructure. You build the thing AND design the system. Set platform standards. Define and maintain reusable frameworks, reference architectures, shared libraries, and CI/CD patterns. Every engagement compounds into organizational capability because of you. Ship production code. You lead by building. You write code, review PRs, and set the engineering standard. Minimum 40% of your time is hands-on. Interface with C-level customers. Translate business problems into technical architectures. Run technical discovery. Earn trust with both the CTO and the engineers in the room. Drive the product feedback loop. Turn field-proven patterns into actionable product roadmap input. You are the bridge between customer reality and product strategy. Raise the bar. Mentor FDE Engineers. Define what great looks like. Enforce engineering rigor across engagements — code quality, testing, documentation, observability. What You Bring You've built and shipped GenAI products in production. Not demos. Not POCs that died. Real systems handling real traffic — RAG pipelines, agent workflows, model orchestration, multi-modal processing. You can whiteboard the architecture AND debug the deployment. Deep AI/ML engineering foundation. You understand the ML behind the tools: transformer architectures, diffusion models, embeddings, vector databases, fine-tuning, prompt engineering. You don't just call APIs — you understand why they work and when they won't. Production engineering rigor. Full-stack (React/Next.js, Node.js/Python, PostgreSQL or equivalent). Strong distributed systems instincts. You think in CI/CD, observability, error budgets, and scalable infrastructure (Docker, Kubernetes, cloud-native). AI-native builder. You use Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, or equivalent daily. You've built MCP servers, custom agents, or agentic workflows. AI tools are how you work, not something you've read about. 8 years of shipping production software. At least 3 years building AI/ML systems. Product engineering background strongly preferred over consulting/services. Executive communication. You can present to a CMO and pair-program with a junior engineer in the same afternoon. Clear, low-ego, high-signal communication. Startup speed in enterprise context. You've operated in fast-moving environments — founded a company, been an early engineer, or led a 0-to-1 product launch. You don't wait for permission. What Sets You Apart You've contributed to open-source AI projects or built tools others use You've published technical writing (blog, talks, papers) that demonstrates depth You have experience with creative/content production workflows (asset management, DAM, content supply chain) You've built multi-agent systems or complex agentic architectures in production About Adobe Adobe empowers everyone to create through innovative platforms and tools that unleash creativity, productivity and personalized custo ... (truncated, view full listing at source)