Director, Multimodal Data Research

Adobe • San Jose, CA

2d • $192,700 - $392,500

About The Position

We are seeking a Director (M60) to lead the Multimodal Data Research organization within Applied Science and Machine Learning (ASML). This organization is responsible for scaling, quality, and innovation in multimodal training data—spanning image, video, and audio—that powers Adobe Firefly’s foundational generative and editing models. The Multimodal Data Research organization sets the data foundation for Firefly’s multimodal intelligence, owning first‑party strategy and execution across ingestion, filtering, captioning, generation and editing‑centric datasets, data‑driven training experiments, and next‑generation data frameworks. By grounding model training in high‑quality, diverse, and workflow‑authentic data, the team directly shapes Firefly’s creative capabilities. This role calls for a technically deep director who can articulate long‑term vision, lead multiple senior teams, and orchestrate execution across a fast‑moving multimodal AI ecosystem.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in machine learning, data systems, or applied research, with significant exposure to large‑scale ML training data.
• Deep understanding of how data quality, composition, and labeling affect generative and editing model behavior.
• Experience working with multimodal data (image, video, audio) and large‑scale data pipelines.
• Strong intuition for balancing research exploration with production constraints.
• Proven experience leading multi‑team organizations in technically complex environments.
• Ability to set long‑term vision while driving near‑term execution.
• Strong cross‑functional leadership skills, with experience influencing research, product, infrastructure, and executive stakeholders.
• Excellent communicator, able to synthesize complex technical and organizational tradeoffs.

Nice To Haves

• Master’s degree or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Data Science, or a related field preferred.

Responsibilities

• Set and own the long‑term vision and roadmap for multimodal data research across image, video, and audio.
• Define clear investment priorities across data quality, coverage, scalability, and iteration speed to support Firefly’s foundational and editing‑centric models.
• Build and evolve an organization that balances research innovation with operational excellence in data delivery.
• Lead multiple teams spanning multimodal data quality and scaling, captioning and prompt rewriting, data frameworks and infrastructure, and systematic training ablations to advance large‑scale pretraining and editing datasets.
• Establish org‑wide quality bars, taxonomies, and evaluation signals for multimodal training data.
• Partner across Adobe and drive adoption of shared tooling, data frameworks, and best practices to reduce duplication and accelerate iteration.
• Lead, mentor, and grow senior managers, staff‑level ICs, and emerging leaders.
• Build a culture of technical rigor, ownership, and thoughtful risk‑taking.
• Attract and retain top talent in multimodal data, ML systems, and applied research.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director