Manager Applied Research Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

The Opportunity
Adobe Firefly Foundry is a managed generative-AI organization that purpose-builds for Media & Entertainment and Consumer product enterprises that need to scale content creation without compromising brand safety or workflow efficiency. By letting customers train private custom Firefly models on their own intellectual property-under strict data isolation and copyright indemnification-and deploy those models directly into Adobe Creative Cloud, Experience Cloud, and proprietary platforms via Firefly Services APIs, Firefly Foundry closes the gap left by consumer-grade GenAI tools and empowers brands to deliver ten-times the creative output at professional quality.
As a Manager for Applied Research at Adobe, you will be the technical and strategic steward of this platform, translating state-of-the-art research into production-ready capabilities, championing them in customer and industry settings, and building the world-class team that will turn vision into reality.
Responsibilities:

• Lead and grow a distributed team focused on Generative AI.
• Define and execute strategy for solving customer problems with Generative AI.
• Enable novel capabilities for controllable and precise multi-modal content generation with Generative AI, solving real customer problems.
• Build and maintain scalable, efficient data, pre-training, and post-training pipelines across the ML model lifecycle.
• Collaborate with researchers, ML engineers, and PMs to align on customer solutions.
• Evaluate and integrate tools and methodologies to enhance infrastructure and workflows.
• Champion data diversity, bias mitigation, and ethical AI practices.
• Provide technical leadership and foster a culture of innovation.
• Partner across teams to align priorities and share best practices.

Qualifications:

• Ph.D. in CS, Data Science, Engineering, AI/ML, or related field-or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years in engineering and research leadership, managing full lifecycle of ML models from research to direct impact on customer workflows.
• Deep understanding of ML data lifecycles, especially for modern generative models.
• Expertise in data quality, governance, versioning, and annotation platforms.
• Strong grasp of data privacy, security, and ethical AI principles.
• Excellent leadership and cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Experience with large-scale image/video datasets and training generative models.

Preferred:

• Experience with computer graphics and VFX pipelines.
• Experience in computer vision, multimedia, or creative content ecosystems.
• Contributions to open-source tools, publications, or patents in computer vision, machine learning, and computer graphics.
• Proven success supporting at-scale generative model training

#FireflyGenAI
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.
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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 $149,300 -- $324,450 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 $224,100 - $324,450In Washington, the pay range for this position is $203,900 - $295,250
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
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.