As a Director (M60) in the Multimodal Data Research organization at Applied Science and Machine Learning, you will lead the scaling, quality, and innovation of multimodal training data for Adobe Firefly’s generative and editing models. Your role involves setting long-term vision and roadmap, defining investment priorities across data quality, coverage, scalability, and iteration speed, while building an organization that balances research innovation with operational excellence. You will manage multiple teams responsible for multimodal data quality, captioning, prompt rewriting, and systematic training ablations, establishing quality standards and fostering collaboration across Adobe. Additionally, you will lead senior managers, staff-level ICs, and emerging leaders, promoting a culture of technical rigor and thoughtful risk-taking to attract top talent in multimodal data and ML systems. The ideal candidate has over 10 years of experience with large-scale ML training data, deep understanding of multimodal data pipelines, and proven leadership skills in complex environments.
Set and own the long-term vision for multimodal data research across image, video, and audio.
Define investment priorities to support Firefly’s foundational and editing-centric models.
Build an organization that balances research innovation with operational excellence in data delivery.
Establish quality standards and evaluation signals for multimodal training data.
Lead multiple teams to advance large-scale pretraining and editing datasets.
Attract and retain top talent in multimodal data, ML systems, and applied research.
What we're looking for
10+ years of experience in machine learning, data systems, or applied research with large-scale ML training data.
Deep understanding of multimodal data (image, video, audio) and its impact on generative and editing models.
Proven leadership in multi-team organizations within technically complex environments.
Ability to set long-term vision while driving near-term execution across technical teams.
Strong background in building and evolving an organization that balances research innovation with operational excellence.
Experience leading senior managers, staff-level ICs, and emerging leaders in a culture of technical rigor and ownership.
Master’s degree or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Data Science, or related field preferred.
Market check
Salary context
This
$271,000–$392,500
range sits above
100%
of similar postings on FindRole.
Peer median band
$112,800–$225,000
Median floor and ceiling across peers.
Typical midpoint (25–75%)
$135,000–$208,800
Middle half of comparable postings.
Based on 240 comparable postings.*
* 240 is the maximum number of comparable postings sampled.
Employer
About Adobe
Adobe Inc. is a global software company known for creative and multimedia software products including Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, and its cloud-based Creative Cloud and Document Cloud suites. Industry: Creative & Digital Experience Software
Adobe currently has
290 open roles
on FindRole.
Listed pay typically runs
$183,300–$265,350
across 290 roles with salary data.