Principal Engineering Program Manager

The Adobe Customer Experience Orchestration (CXO) Cloud, Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) & Applications (Apps) Portfolio seeks a Program Management Leader for the Forward Deployed Engineer Program - a team of technically adept engineers and problem-solvers who work directly with customers to deploy our platforms, operationalize critical workflows, and deliver measurable outcomes.

You will partner with the Engineering Leader to build and scale the FDE operating model, ensuring our teams are positioned to solve our customers’ hardest problems. This is a highly cross-functional leadership role that blends program strategy, technical depth, operational excellence, and direct customer mission impact.

You will partner closely with Engineering, Product, Customer Success, Support, and Field leadership to ensure FDE engagements consistently deliver value, accelerate adoption, and surface product opportunities grounded in real-world use.

What You’ll Do

Lead and Evolve the FDE Program

• Develop a clear long-term strategy for the FDE Program that strengthens our ability to operate in ambiguous, critical environments.
• Define the engagement lifecycle—from intake and scoping through field deployment, measurement of impact, and long-term sustainment.
• Build and refine the FDE operating model, including deployment patterns, staffing frameworks, leveling, onboarding, and technical training.

Drive Execution Across Complex, High-Stakes Engagements

• Oversee the execution of multi-phase engineering deployments that require navigating complex data, architecture, and integration challenges.
• Provide strategic oversight for engagements where FDEs are embedding directly with customer teams to design, build, and operationalize solutions.
• Partner with field leadership to ensure FDE support aligns to account strategy, mission outcomes, and renewal readiness.

Own Customer Outcomes

• Serve as an executive escalation point for high-visibility implementations, resolving obstacles that require cross-org coordination or executive alignment.
• Ensure every FDE engagement drives measurable value—accelerated adoption, operational efficiencies, reduced risk, or transformation of customer workflows.
• Lead executive communications around program status, risks, and customer mission impact.

Bridge Engineering, Product, and Real-World Deployment

• Partner with Product & Engineering leadership to bring deployment insights—feature gaps, blueprint needs, scaling patterns—into roadmap prioritization.
• Establish systematic feedback loops between FDEs and engineering teams so product decisions reflect real-world customer conditions.
• Ensure the FDE program becomes a central mechanism for validating new features, patterns, and architectural guidelines.

Establish Operational Rigor & Cross-Functional Governance

• Own the operational cadence for the FDE program: quarterly planning, capacity forecasting, hiring plans, budget management.
• Lead risk governance, ensuring issues are surfaced early, resourced correctly, and resolved with clarity and accountability.
• Build a global strategy for scaling the program across geographies to support strategic accounts worldwide.

What We’re Looking For

Required

• 10–15+ years of program leadership experience in technical, engineering, or customer-deployed environments.
• Experience leading technical deployment programs that involve solution architecture and field engineering.
• Demonstrated ability to ship complex products or solutions in ambiguous, high-pressure environments with incomplete information.
• Strong command of enterprise architectures, cloud platforms, data pipelines, integrations, and multi-product ecosystems.
• Ability to navigate deeply technical conversations and facilitate alignment between engineering teams and non-technical customer executives.
• Track record of owning outcomes end-to-end , not just managing tasks or milestones.
• Superb written/verbal executive communication skills, especially under uncertainty or customer concern.
• Bachelor’s/ Master’s degree or equivalent experience in a technical field or commensurate work experience.

Preferred

• Background in Forward Deployed Engineering, Solution Architecture, TPM leadership, or technical field organizations.
• Director level experience
• Experience working with complex, distributed systems or highly regulated industries (e.g., finance, public sector, retail, healthcare).
• Experience building programs from the ground up or leading transformation of engineering deployment models.

Success Measures (First 12–18 Months)

• A fully operational, scalable FDE program that supports multiple regions and strategic accounts.
• Clear intake, scoping, deployment, and transition models that reduce ambiguity and accelerate customer outcomes.
• Strong, trusted relationships with Engineering, Product, and Field leadership.
• FDE engagements consistently delivering measurable customer value and accelerating adoption.
• Recognized by executives as a strategic, high-leverage program for customer success and product improvement.

Why This Role Matters

Forward Deployed Engineering is the bridge between our most advanced technology and our customers’ most critical problems. This role is based in San Jose and requires the candidate to be in office 4 or 5 days of the week and shapes how rapidly and effectively customers achieve value from our platform—and how quickly our engineering teams learn from the real world. You will build the program that powers some of our most impactful customer outcomes.

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 $143,200 -- $269,900 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.

Internal Opportunities

Creativity, curiosity, and constant learning are celebrated aspects of your career growth journey. We’re glad that you’re pursuing a new opportunity at Adobe!

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 or call +1 408-536-3015. 

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 $146,300 -- $277,400 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 $191,600 - $277,400


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

If this role is open to hiring in Colorado (as listed on the job posting), the application window will remain open until at least the date and time stated above in Pacific Time, in compliance with Colorado pay transparency regulations. If this role does not have Colorado listed as a hiring location, no specific application window applies, and the posting may close at any time based on hiring needs.

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.