Director of Applied Research, Firefly Video & Audio

Key Skills

Aartificial intelligence, Algorithms, Analytical and Problem solving, Deep Learning, Effective communication skills, Generative AI, Machine learning techniques, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Product Management

Job Description

We’re on a mission to hire the very best and are committed to creating exceptional employee experiences where everyone is respected and has access to equal opportunity. We realize that new ideas can come from everywhere in the organization, and we know the next big idea could be yours!

Changing the world through digital experiences is what Adobe’s all about. And in the last several years, we've been on a roll launching the Firefly family of models: Image, Vector and Designs - leading to almost 5 billion images generated since March '23!

We deeply believe that training Generative models for content creation and editing, training them responsibly and making them usable commercially, deeply integrating them in existing workflow and enabling creative control for our professional and consumer users is the right strategy to help our customers success in this AI era, and transform Adobe into an AI company!

Adobe Firefly Applied Science & Machine Learning (ASML) organization is looking for a highly motivated and skilled applied research leader to head our efforts in developing Adobe Firefly video & audio foundation models and their applications. This leader will also oversee the advanced development of model efficiency algorithms to reduce the model size and inference time of our foundational models across all modalities. You will be leading several research teams that design, train and deliver new Firefly models. You will provide strategic technical guidance to steer the direction of the development and to ensure the success of the shipping of Firefly video and audio models in the near future.

As a Director of Applied Research at Adobe, you will join an outstanding team of applied researchers building the future of digital experiences powered by Generative AI models. You will have the opportunity to advise the Adobe AI technology portfolio and shape the product development strategy. You will oversee rapid innovation to advance the creativity world through features in Adobe's products and reach millions of people worldwide.

What you'll do

• Define the applied research charter in the video, audio and model efficiency domains.

• Supervise video and audio foundational models from several teams of applied scientists and machine learning engineers.

• Supervise Network Architecture Search (NAS), pruning, distillation, quantization algorithms to improve model inference efficiency

• Keep track of the latest innovation in academia and open-source community to encourage rapid adoption of pioneering technologies and introduce in-house adaptation and improvements.

• Establish strong partnership with other research and applied research teams to jointly push forward Generative AI agenda.

• Work with our product teams to define the quality targets and prioritize feature developments.

• Provide clear requirements for the data and platform teams to prepare for model training.

• Supervise the model handoff and integration engineering for downstream model evaluation, and service deployment.

• Collaborate with Firefly imaging foundation model team to leverage and build various applications

• Partner with NLP team to establish the end2end algorithm pipeline for video generation and editing workflows.

• Collaborate with design and product management to identify model limitations and areas of improvement needed. Supervise the solution design for addressing the identified priorities.

• Collaborate with legal, privacy and product equity teams to identify model safety issues, lead the solution development for addressing these issues

• Refine engineering processes and practices to increase team productivity

• Conduct hiring and talent development to accelerate success.

What you need to succeed

• Excellent leadership skills to inspire and motivate team members to achieve their best work.

• Excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to communicate effectively across a large multi-functional team.

• Strong experience in modern machine learning especially Gen AI models for image, video, and audio domains.

• Knowledge of machine learning engineering standard methodologies to guide the teams to produce reusable and modular code.

• 5+ years of relevant leadership experience in research or applied research organization. Strong understanding of innovative research from academic publications.

• Experience in data preparation process for training large-scale deep learning models. Be able to write clear data requirements for data sourcing and infrastructure team to prepare data needed for production training.

• Knowledge in distributed training setup and interest in improving training efficiency and reducing training cost.

• Experience in managing leaders and experience in quickly and efficiently scale the teams.

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, be able to think strategically and make data-driven decisions

• A master’s or PhD degree in computer science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent proven experience.

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 $174,100 -- $346,800 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.

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.

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