Director of Engineering: Architect the Creative OS

Opportunity
We’re building Graph, a node-based creative platform that is simultaneously a powerful developer infrastructure and a creator-facing product. This is a foundational leadership role for someone who can architect systems, inspire teams, and ship things that matter.

Role
Graph is not a feature, it’s an operating system for creative expression. A unified node-based execution layer that powers generative AI workflows, orchestrates multimodal media pipelines, and gives creators and developers a composable, programmable canvas.

As Director of Engineering, you will own the technical execution of this system: from the real‑time interactive graph editor used by creators, to the distributed execution engine that powers APIs, automations, and product surfaces underneath.

You’ll partner directly with Product, Design, and Architecture, and scale a high-performing team while staying hands‑on enough to shape key technical decisions.

What You’ll Own
Product & Platform
Lead engineering team for building Graph as both a creator‑facing application (visual workflow builder) and a platform layer (execution engine + APIs powering multiple product surfaces). Partner with Product and Design to define interaction models, primitives, and UX paradigms.

Architecture
Work closely with the architect for the node‑based execution engine (real‑time + async), stateful workflow composition and persistence, and graph execution across heterogeneous systems: GenAI services, media processing, and external APIs. Ensure a shared execution layer across all surfaces.

Generative AI
Integrate first‑ and third‑party GenAI models into graph nodes. Build abstractions for prompting, chaining, and multi‑step pipelines. Enable reusable, composable “capsule” nodes for multimodal inputs and outputs across text, image, video, 3D and audio.

Team Leadership
Build and lead a high‑performing team across frontend, backend, and platform. Drive execution across multiple workstreams with clear ownership and accountability. Establish strong engineering practices around code quality, testing, reliability, and dev velocity.

Extensibility
Design Graph as a platform for internal and external developers. Enable third‑party integrations, custom node creation, and API‑first access to workflows. Define clear contracts between the platform and product layers.

What We’re Looking For
Experience

12+ years in software engineering, with 5+ years in engineering leadership roles – managing teams, running programs, and owning hiring.

People development, career conversations, performance management, and team morale.

Proven experience building complex platforms or developer‑facing systems at scale.

Track record shipping interactive products, creative tools, IDEs, design systems, or similar.

Strong background in building distributed systems.

Technical Fluency

Technically literate enough to understand platform architecture, hold engineers accountable, and represent technical trade‑offs upward.

Familiarity with distributed systems, APIs, or creative tooling is a plus.

Comfortable working in a system where architectural authority sits with a Principal Engineer.

Leadership & Product Mindset

Operates at both strategy and execution levels, capable of writing a technical brief and unblocking an engineer in the same day, whenever required.

Strong instincts for user workflows and product experience, not just systems architecture.

Translates ambiguity into clear technical direction with minimal hand‑holding.

Experienced cross‑functional partner for Product, Design, Customers and executive stakeholders.

Nice to Have

Experience with node‑based systems (visual programming, shader graphs, NLE timelines, etc.).

Background in creative tools, imaging, design, video, audio, or 3D.

Experience building extensible platforms or developer ecosystems.

Familiarity with agentic systems or workflow automation frameworks.

Open source contributions or community‑facing platform work.

Compensation
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 $186,500 – $358,250 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 $247,400 – $358,250. In Washington, the pay range for this position is $228,600 – $331,050.

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.

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