The Opportunity

FireflyFoundryis a new business venture at Adobe an enterprise managed-serviceoffering forcustom multimedia generative AI. The offering includes deep-tuned custom image video and 3D models built on each customers IP paired with creative workflows for content production and VFX deployed across new and existing Adobe surfaces and surrounded by a media intelligence layer. The business has gained significant traction in Media & Entertainment (M&E) marketing and consumer retail and is rapidly expanding into adjacent verticals.

We are hiring aDirector ML Engineeringto own the engineering function behindFireflyFoundrys model services at enterprise scale. This is a multi-faceted executive role with end-to-end accountability for howFireflyFoundrys models are productionized served andoperatedfor our enterprise customers and for the engineering organization that delivers that capability.

What this role owns

You will define and implement the technical strategy that turnsFireflyFoundryfrom a managed service for early-design partners into a platform capable of serving hundreds of enterprise customers concurrently each with their own IP tenancy boundaries and SLAs powering everything from franchise extensions and new IP development to modern GenAI workflows at production scale. Specifically you will:

• Set the engineering operating model for productionizing custom generative models across image video and 3D including the architectural patterns that simplify pipeline construction and let us absorb a heterogeneous mix of internal and external models without linear engineering cost.
• Own the unit economics ofFireflyFoundryinference. Cost-to-serve GPUutilization and gross margin on the managed service are your numbers.
• Define the tenancy and data-isolation architecture that lets us honor enterprise IP contracts under audit.
• Drive the self-serve roadmap that broadensFireflyFoundrys reach and value beyond hands-on engagements.
• Represent Adobe engineering in C-suite and senior technical conversations with studios brands and global enterprises including VPs of Production CTOs and Chief Digital Officers.

Who you will partner with

• Applied Science to ensure inference quality matches the training environment and to make prioritization calls on emerging techniques for multimedia
• FireflyFoundryStudio to translate ambitious creative visions into reliable high-performance ML systems that transform how content is conceivedproduced anddelivered and into concrete roadmaps with clear milestones and success metrics.
• Post-sales field organization engagement managers and creative technologists in customer engagements where you serve as the engineering leadership representative and educate the field on APIs and services.
• AI Platform and adjacent Adobe orgs to negotiate shared infrastructure accelerator capacity and serving primitives at platform scale.
• Strategic partners including GPU vendors andhyperscalers where capacity planning roadmap alignment and partnership economics are part of your remit.

What you will do

Build and lead the engineering organization

• Lead a multi-team engineering organization of ML engineers and engineering managers; recruit hire develop andretainsenior technical and leadership talent and build a culture of engineering rigor and delivery discipline.
• Hiring at scale is a material part of this role FireflyFoundryis growing rapidly and sustaining scaling momentum depends on it. You will integrate top technical and leadership talent into the organization at thepacethe business demands.
• Establish the engineering bar the bench and the talent strategy that letFireflyFoundrysustain 10x growth incapabilitybreadth and traffic without linear headcount growth.
• Define the operating rhythm goal-setting exec reviews and engineering reviews that keeps a fast-scaling org coordinated.

Define and own the technical strategy

• Own the multi-year architecture for training and inference at scale: pipeline construction data pipelines evaluation frameworks model lifecycle management and acceleratorutilization(CUDA NCCL and the wider GPU stack).
• Set the strategy for fast model deployment parallel pipeline operation at scale tenancy/data isolation and self-serve capability buildout.
• Make the build-vs-buy and prioritization calls on emerging GenAI techniques in partnership with Applied Science based on material improvements in capability cost or speed.

Own production reliability and economics

• Hold the line onproductionSLAs for orchestrated and deployed model services.
• Own analytics and observability across every model pipeline quality latency cost andutilization.
• Drive cost-to-serve down on a multi-year curve while expanding capability.

Drive customer and partner outcomes

• Represent engineering in technical customer engagements with enterprise customers translating creative and business requirements into ML roadmaps milestones and success metrics.
• Co-design scalable cost-efficientserving forreal-time on-set use cases and high-volume social content generation in partnership with infrastructure and platform teams.
• Steward the GPU vendor andhyperscalerrelationships that underwriteFireflyFoundrysserving capacity.

What you bring

Leadership scope

• 10 yearsin applied machine learning and ML systems including5 yearsleading engineering organizations with prior experience leading managers of managers.
• Demonstrated success shipping generative AI products in production at enterprise scale.
• Proven ability tooperateas a peer to VP-level partners across product science infrastructure and field organizations and torepresentengineering credibly in front of senior customer and partner executives.
• Track recordof building engineering benches defining career frameworks for emerging roles and developing leaders who themselves become directors.

Technical judgment

• Deep understanding of the modern generative model landscape (diffusion transformers VAEs latent video models control/adapters or similar) enough to make architecture investment and prioritization calls with confidence in close partnership with Applied Science.
• Strong intuition for the economics and engineering reality of large-scale inference: accelerator stacks model optimization and quantization and the tradeoffs between quality latency and cost.
• Experience designing and operating ML systems end-to-end data training evaluation deployment monitoring and continuous improvement at production scale.
• Familiarity with high-resolution media pipelines (4K video high bit-depth) or adjacent bandwidth- and latency-sensitive domains is a meaningful plus.

Communication and judgment

• Executive presence and communication skills able to brief executives customers and partners credibly and to work directly with creative production and business collaborators to turn ambiguous problems into clear technical plans.
• Sound judgment under ambiguity comfortable making decisions with incomplete information and revising asnew informationarrives.

Education

• MS or PhD in Computer Science Electrical Engineering or a related field or equivalent practical experience building and leading advanced ML systems.

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