Principal Machine Learning Engineer

The Opportunity 

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. 

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. 

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. 

What you will do 

• 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 you bring 

• 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. 

Education 

• Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience building and leading production-scale ML systems. 

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