Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering, Creative AI

FDE Times; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 148,000 - 293,000; Full time

Job summary

Adobe is seeking a senior player-coach full-stack engineer who can deliver production-grade software while leading and growing a high-performance team. You will demo live results to Fortune 100 stakeholders, mentor engineers, and drive adoption through hands-on delivery.

You will manage and grow engineers, maintain a strong public portfolio, and own multi-step automation workflows, ensuring customer value and repeat business across an entire account.

Qualifications

• 8–10 years shipping real software, full-stack, with active production code
• 2+ years as a direct people manager
• Deep hands-on mastery of a professional creative tool and a portfolio proving it
• Hands-on experience building multi-step automated workflows/pipelines (ComfyUI, n8n, or similar)
• A track record of turning resistance into adoption and building a scalable team
• A named senior customer stakeholder and a named decision you drove in the last 12 months
• Hard requirement: public portfolio or verifiable shipped work showing both engineering and creative work, personally done by you

Responsibilities

• Split 50/50: code work and customer-facing demos.
• Hire and coach team to achieve adoption and strong performance.
• Deliver real customer value across accounts, not just personal touchpoints.

Skills

Full-stack engineering

People management

Creative tool mastery

Automated workflows

Stakeholder management

Public portfolio

Shipped production code

Tools

Photoshop

Illustrator

InDesign

ComfyUI

n8n

Job description

Job Description

Elite full-stack engineer. Elite creative-tool expert. Elite public speaker who commands Fortune 100 boardrooms. Now do it as a player-coach — and make your team elite at all three too.

Read this before you apply. This role requires all four of the following — at the same time, in the same person. Not three out of four.

• You ship production code every week — real, full-stack systems that run in front of real customers. Not scripts. Not prototypes that die after the demo. Not “I used to code.”
• You have deep, professional-grade mastery of at least one of: Figma, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Cinema 4D or Substance 3D — or an equivalent tool in your craft. Not familiarity. Mastery.
• You can walk into a room of CMOs and CTOs from a Fortune 100 brand, run a live demo unscripted, and walk out with the room won.
• You’ve hired, grown, and performance-managed engineers — you can point to someone who’s more senior today because of you, and a hard call (a PIP, a coach-out) you’ve actually made, not just managed.

This bar has to be met on day one, not grown into. If you’re three-quarters there, that’s genuinely great — just come back when the fourth is true too.

What you’ll do

50/50, player-coach. Half your week: in the code, in the customer’s room, running the demo yourself. The other half: hiring people better than you, coaching your team to earn the same adoption you do, making the whole bench sharper.

The only metric that matters here: did the customer get real value, and did they come back for more — across your whole team’s accounts, not just the ones you personally touch. That’s the entire job. Everything else is noise.

What you need

• 8–10 years shipping real software, full-stack, with active production code — not historical
• 2+ years as a direct people manager
• Deep hands-on mastery of a professional creative tool (see above) — a portfolio proving it
• Hands-on experience building multi-step automated workflows/pipelines (ComfyUI, n8n, or similar)
• A track record of turning resistance into adoption yourself — and of building a team that repeats it, not a one-person hero act
• A named senior customer stakeholder and a named decision you drove with them in the last 12 months
• Hard requirement: public portfolio or verifiable shipped work showing both the engineering and creative side, personally done by you. No portfolio, no review.

Strong pluses (not required, we’ll help you ramp)

• Experience with Adobe Firefly Services, Firefly Creative Production / Workflow Builder, or Adobe Brand Intelligence
• Domain depth in Healthcare & Life Sciences, Financial Services, or Media & Entertainment — especially MLR (medical/legal/regulatory) compliance-review experience
• DevOps fluency

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.

Our 30,000+ employees worldwide are creating the future and raising the bar as we drive the next decade of growth. We’re on a mission to hire the very best and believe in creating a company culture where all employees are empowered to make an impact. At Adobe, we believe that great ideas can come from anywhere in the organization. The next big idea could be yours.

Let’s Adobe together

At Adobe, we believe in creating a company culture where all employees are empowered to make an impact. Learn more about Adobe life, including our values and culture, focus on people, purpose and community, Adobe for All, comprehensive benefits programs, the stories we tell, the customers we serve, and how you can help us advance our mission of empowering everyone to create.

Adobe is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based on gender, race or color, ethnicity or national origin, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic. Learn more.

Adobe aims to make our Careers website and recruiting process accessible to any and all users. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation to navigate our website or complete the application process, email [e-mail].

AI Use Guidelines for Interviews

Our interviews are designed to reflect your own skills and thinking. The use of AI or recording tools during live interviews is not permitted unless explicitly invited by the interviewer or approved in advance as part of a reasonable accommodation. If these tools are used inappropriately or in a way that misrepresents your work, your application may not move forward in the process.

At Adobe, we empower employees to innovate with AI — and we look for candidates eager to do the same. As part of the hiring experience, we provide clear guidance on where AI is encouraged during the process and where it’s restricted during live interviews. See how we think about AI in the hiring experience.

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 $147,900 - $293,250 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 $202,500 - $293,250. In New York, the pay range for this position is $202,500 - $293,250

At Adobe, for sales roles starting salaries are expressed as total target compensation (TTC = base + commission), and short-term incentives are in the form of sales commission plans. Non-sales roles starting salaries are expressed as base salary and short-term incentives are in the form of the Annual Incentive Plan (AIP).

In addition, certain roles may be eligible for long-term incentives in the form of a new hire equity award.

State-Specific Notices

California

Fair Chance Ordinances