Manager, Firefly FDE

About the role

Adobe is looking for a Manager, Forward Deployed AI Engineering (Firefly FDE) in Bangalore. The role leads, mentors and inspires a team of Forward Deployed AI Engineers who prototype, build and launch GenAI-powered solutions directly with customers. It works closely with the Director, Forward Deployed AI Engineering, to build a world-class product engineering organization with a customer-facing DNA.

Key responsibilities

• Recruit, coach and empower a team of Forward Deployed AI Engineers and selected Forward Deployed AI Architects, acting as both mentor and peer-level engineer.
• Sponsor and engage directly in strategic customer programs, building and launching solutions with engineers when needed.
• Ensure teams apply Forward Deployed Engineering principles: embedded collaboration, rapid prototyping, iterative feedback and production-grade handoffs.
• Define and enforce engineering standards across pods, including CI/CD pipelines, reusable frameworks, architecture playbooks and model governance.
• Partner with Directors of Forward Deployed Engineering and Architecture to align technical approaches and funnel innovations into Adobe Firefly and GenStudio roadmaps.
• Publish playbooks, reusable modules and lessons learned, and represent the team in customer workshops, internal reviews and external forums.

Required profile

• 8+ years of software engineering, AI/ML or technical consulting experience, with recent hands-on development in full-stack, cloud and GenAI applications.
• More than 3 years managing people or leading technical teams, with mentoring and coaching experience.
• Track record of direct engagement with enterprise customers and building trust as an engineer and strategic partner.
• Willingness to travel up to 30% to support customers and teams in person.

Required skills

• Modern AI technologies: LLMs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta Llama, Mistral), diffusion models, RAG pipelines, vector databases, agent frameworks (LangChain, LlamaIndex, AutoGen).
• Adobe Firefly APIs, Creative Cloud SDKs, GenStudio for Performance Marketing and enterprise integration patterns.
• Cloud deployments (AWS, Azure), CI/CD, Docker and Kubernetes.