Senior AI Platform Engineer- Data and Systems

Adobe; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 208,300 - 301,600; Full time

Job summary

Adobe in San Jose is looking for an experienced Data Engineer to work on the Adobe Express Data Platform. In this role, you will design and build advanced data pipelines, ensure low-latency online serving, and develop automated solutions for data management. The ideal candidate will have over 6 years of experience in data platform engineering, strong proficiency in Apache Spark and cloud technologies, and a proven ability to optimize large-scale data workflows. Adobe offers a competitive salary range and is committed to inclusion in the workplace.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience in data platform engineering or distributed systems.
• Deep hands-on experience with Apache Spark or equivalent lakehouse technologies.
• Proven track record in large-scale pipelines processing billions of events daily.

Responsibilities

• Design and build streaming-first data pipelines with reduced latency.
• Own and extend the ML Attribute Store for low-latency serving.
• Develop automated anomaly detection and pipeline self-healing capabilities.

Skills

Data platform engineering

Distributed systems

Backend infrastructure

Apache Spark

Kafka

Python

Education

BS/MS in Computer Science or Engineering

Tools

Apache Kafka

AWS

CI/CD

Job description

The Opportunity

Adobe Express Data Platform is the intelligence backbone for millions of creators – a billion-event-per-day system spanning streaming, feature serving, agent data APIs, and a lakehouse that powers every personalization decision, experiment, and AI workflow. We are evolving it into a streaming‑first, self‑healing, agent‑ready Lakehouse and we need engineers who challenge the status quo, move fast, and default to an agentic‑first approach for every problem they encounter.

This is a systems‑first engineering role. You won’t build ML models, you’ll build the foundational infrastructure that makes AI, analytics, and autonomous agents possible at scale. You’ll bring the conviction that any manual, repetitive, or slow platform workflow is a candidate for agentic automation and the engineering skill to make that real.

We are tackling hard, consequential problems: collapsing multi‑hour pipeline latency to real‑time, building MCP‑compatible agent data APIs so autonomous AI systems can query and reason over platform data, evolving our ML Attribute Store with low‑latency online feature serving, and pioneering AI‑powered data governance that replaces manual operational toil with self‑healing pipelines. Our team’s motto is simple: make the platform simpler, faster, and more reliable. Shipping fast isn’t reckless here – it’s a discipline.

What You’ll Do

• Design and build streaming‑first data pipelines that collapse end‑to‑end latency from hours to minutes, through event‑driven architectures.
• Own and extend the ML Attribute Store – building low‑latency online serving capabilities alongside batch feature computation with unified batch/streaming aggregation to prevent training‑serving skew.
• Build MCP‑compatible Agent Data APIs and tool servers that make the lakehouse discoverable and queryable by autonomous AI agents through standardized protocols, semantic layers, and catalog‑driven data discovery.
• Develop agentic framework – automated anomaly detection, duplicate event cleanup, transient event lifecycle management with audit trails, pipeline self‑healing, and root cause analysis automation.
• Drive operational excellence: observability, incident detection and response automation, performance tuning, cost optimization, and on‑call ownership for mission‑critical platform services.
• Collaborate across Data Science, Personalization, Engineering Operations, Product, and Experimentation teams to translate platform capabilities into self‑serve infrastructure that reduces engineering toil for non‑platform teams.
• Use and champion AI‑powered developer tools (Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, or similar) to accelerate personal and team engineering velocity.

What You Need To Succeed

Platform & Distributed Systems

• 6+ years of experience in data platform engineering, distributed systems, or backend infrastructure at scale.
• Deep hands‑on experience with Apache Spark, Databricks, Delta Lake, or equivalent lakehouse technologies (Iceberg, Hudi).
• Proven track record building and operating large‑scale pipelines processing billions of events daily with sub‑hour latency SLAs.
• Strong experience with streaming systems: Kafka, Kinesis, Flink, Spark Structured Streaming, or Delta Live Tables.
• Proficiency in Python and/or Scala; SQL fluency required. Java or Go is a plus.
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS or Azure), containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and CI/CD for data pipelines.

AI‑Native Engineering & Agentic Systems

• Production experience integrating LLMs into engineering workflows – not prototypes, but systems running against real data with real users. Includes prompt engineering, tool‑use/function‑calling, structured output parsing, and context window management.
• Hands‑on experience with agentic AI frameworks and multi‑agent orchestration (LangChain, LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen, or custom agent loops with memory, planning, and tool routing).
• Understanding of MCP (Model Context Protocol) and/or A2A protocols for exposing platform capabilities as agent‑consumable tool servers – or demonstrable ability to build equivalent agent‑tool integration surfaces.
• Experience building or operating ML Feature Stores (online and/or offline), including training‑serving skew mitigation, feature freshness trade‑offs, and real‑time feature computation.
• Familiarity with RAG architectures: embedding generation, vector databases (FAISS, Pinecone, Weaviate, Databricks Vector Search), document chunking strategies, and retrieval evaluation.
• Exposure to semantic layers, knowledge graphs, or metadata‑driven data discovery systems (Unity Catalog, DataHub, OpenMetadata) that enable agents to autonomously navigate enterprise data catalogs.
• Ability to build evaluation and feedback pipelines for AI systems – measuring agent accuracy, latency, cost attribution per workflow, and reliability at scale.
• Demonstrated use of AI‑powered developer tools (Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, or similar) to accelerate engineering velocity.

Mindset & Working Style

• Agentic‑first instinct: you default to “can an agent do this?” before reaching for manual solutions, scripts, or traditional automation. You see every repetitive workflow as a target for autonomous replacement.
• Challenger mentality: you question inherited architecture, push back on “we’ve always done it this way,” and drive fast improvement through first‑principles thinking. You treat the status quo as technical debt.
• Extreme bias for action and time‑to‑market: you ship iteratively, prefer “good enough now” over “perfect later,” and unblock yourself. You measure success in production impact, not design docs.
• Systems thinker who traces dependencies, considers second‑order effects, and asks “why did this break?” not just “how do I fix it?”
• End‑to‑end ownership from design through production through 2 AM incident response. Platform reliability is personal.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building AI‑powered developer tools, self‑serve data platforms, or code generation agents that reduce engineering toil.
• Experience migrating batch‑first data architectures to streaming‑first without disrupting downstream consumers – including dual‑write patterns, shadow pipelines, and incremental cutover strategies.
• Experience building autonomous monitoring systems that detect, diagnose, and remediate pipeline failures without human intervention – circuit breakers, auto‑rollback, and intelligent retry logic.
• Familiarity with Adobe‑native data and analytics solutions (CJA, AEP, Adobe Analytics) and data governance automation including FinOps practices, cost attribution, and compliance frameworks.
• Contributions to open‑source data or AI infrastructure projects, published engineering blog posts, or conference talks.
• BS/MS in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical 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 $159,200 – $301,600 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 $208,300 – $301,600.

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.

Equal Employment Opportunity

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.

State‑Specific Notices

California

Fair Chance Ordinances: Adobe will consider qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records for employment in accordance with state and local laws and “fair chance” ordinances.

Colorado

Application Window Notice: If this role is open to hiring in Colorado (as listed on the job posting), the application window will remain open until at least the date and time stated above in Pacific Time, in compliance with Colorado pay transparency regulations. If this role does not have Colorado listed as a hiring location, no specific application window applies, and the posting may close at any time based on hiring needs.

Massachusetts

Massachusetts Legal Notice: It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.