Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

The Opportunity

Adobe Experience Platform powers real-time customer experiences for the world’s largest enterprises — unifying data, resolving identity at scale, orchestrating journeys, and activating audiences across every channel. Behind these capabilities are engineering teams that must understand both the platform’s architecture and the regulated, complex environments where customers operate.

The Forward Deployed Engineer role sits at the intersection of solution architecture, technical consulting, and hands-on engineering. You will be embedded with Adobe’s most strategic customers — working directly with their teams to solve complex platform challenges, design scalable architectures, and build what’s needed to unblock adoption and expansion.

You operate inside cross-functional Customer Pods — small, autonomous teams with end-to-end ownership — translating customer problems into working platform solutions. You lead with architecture, prototype rapidly, and close the gap between what customers need and what the platform delivers.

What You’ll Do

• Partner directly with strategic customers to understand their architecture, workflows, security requirements, and business objectives.
• Translate complex customer problems into scalable solution designs, reference architectures, and working prototypes.
• Investigate and troubleshoot production-level platform issues — from data ingestion and identity resolution to journey orchestration and audience activation.
• Design and validate end-to-end enterprise solutions spanning AEP, RTCDP, AJO, and adjacent Adobe systems.
• Lead architecture workshops, health checks, and technical deep-dives that earn customer trust before any commercial motion.
• Rapidly prototype, experiment, and iterate on new capabilities — using AI-assisted tools as a standard part of execution.
• Bridge the gap between customer needs, product direction, and engineering implementation — feeding field patterns back into the product roadmap.
• Own the technical relationship with assigned accounts — from initial discovery through implementation, go-live, and expansion.

What Success Looks Like

We hire for demonstrated impact, not credential accumulation. Strong candidates will show:

• Software Development Acumen — You write code, build prototypes, and ship working software. Your architectures are grounded in implementation reality because you’ve built them yourself.
• Customer Empathy — You connect with customers on their terms — understanding their pressures, constraints, and definitions of success. Trust is earned through empathy, not just expertise.
• Collaborative Engagement — You engage cross-functionally with ease, aligning engineers, architects, product managers, and executive stakeholders around shared outcomes.
• Communication — You communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences — in workshops, written architecture reviews, and executive briefings.
• Business Acumen — You translate business goals into solution design. You understand the use case before reaching for the technology, and your architectures reflect that order of operations.
• Cross-Product Architecture — You design end-to-end solutions across multiple products and systems — not just individual components. Your architectures hold up under integration, scale, and production conditions.
• Data Modeling — You understand how data is structured, modeled, and moved. You can evaluate trade-offs in schema design, identity resolution, and data pipeline architecture.
• Growth Mindset & AI Fluency — You actively build toward agentic capabilities and adopt AI-assisted development tools (Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, or equivalent) as a standard part of how you design, prototype, and deliver.
• Bias Toward Action — You identify problems before they are assigned and drive them to resolution. You don’t wait for permission to move.

Typical background: 8–15+ years across solution architecture, software engineering, technical consulting, or customer-facing engineering roles. Masters or bachelor’s in computer science or any relevant field. What matters is what that experience has produced — not the title or the number of years.

Your Domain

• AEP / RTCDP / AJO — Adobe’s core platform: data ingestion, segmentation, journey orchestration, audience activation.
• Enterprise Architecture — Multi-system integration, data flows, identity resolution, API design across complex landscapes.
• Security & Compliance — Regulated industries (FSI, Healthcare), data sovereignty, privacy-preserving architectures, GDPR.
• Cloud Platforms — AWS, Azure: infrastructure patterns, managed services, networking.
• Data Platforms — Event-driven architectures, streaming pipelines, batch processing, data lakes.
• Observability — Platform health, SLO definition, performance governance, production monitoring.

Nice to Have

• Experience with Adobe Experience Cloud products (AEP, AJO, RTCDP, CJA, Target).
• Background in similar platforms — CDP, MDM, martech, or data platforms.
• Experience in regulated industries (Financial Services, Healthcare, Government) and familiarity with their compliance and security constraints.
• Experience with data governance, privacy-preserving computation, or secure data collaboration patterns.
• Familiarity with identity resolution or customer data unification systems.
• Experience with workflow orchestration (Temporal, Step Functions, or similar).
• Track record of driving architecture decisions or technical strategy at team or org level.

How You’ll Work — Pod-Based Execution

You operate within small, cross-functional Customer Pods — outcome-oriented teams embedded with specific strategic accounts.

Each Pod has:

• Customer Representative — feedback and validation
• Product Manager — prioritization and decision-making
• Engineers / Builders — implementation and experimentation
• Account Team + Enterprise Architects — enterprise alignment and strategy

The Forward Deployed Engineer acts as the technical execution backbone of the Pod: customer-facing, highly technical, hands-on, enterprise-aware, and focused on rapid end-to-end delivery.

Key principles: Run small, time-boxed experiments. Maintain tight customer feedback loops. Prototype before fully building. Document learnings and decisions. Use staged rollouts to reduce risk.

Why This Team

• Work on complex enterprise problems with direct customer impact — your solutions go live in production, not in slide decks.
• Operate inside autonomous, cross-functional Pods embedded with Adobe’s most strategic accounts.
• Combine architecture, strategy, engineering, and customer engagement in a single role — no two weeks look the same.
• Shape a new engineering engagement model centered around rapid experimentation and AI-assisted execution.
• Collaborate with experienced engineers across Adobe’s global platform teams.
• Build engineering credibility that earns expansion rights — from workshops to FDE to renewals.

This role is for engineers who want to understand not only how systems work — but why they matter to the customer.

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 accommodations@adobe.com.

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 $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.

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

There is no deadline to apply to this job posting because Adobe accepts applications for this role on an ongoing basis. The posting will remain open based on hiring needs and position availability.

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.