Senior Computer Scientist

As a Senior Engineer, you will be a key technical authority for Lightroom, driving architecture decisions, setting engineering standards, and mentoring a high-calibre team of senior engineers. This is a hands-on leadership role that sits at the intersection of deep technical craft and product strategy.
 

Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Provide technical leadership across multiple feature areas and engineering initiatives.
• Define and drive long-term architecture and technical strategy for Lightroom Desktop, including its modern C++ desktop stack.
• Lead the design and implementation of complex, cross-platform systems and subsystems.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and guide adoption where they deliver measurable customer or engineering value.

Product & Team Collaboration

• Partner with Product Management, Design, Research, and other engineering organisations to define product direction and the technical roadmap.
• Influence engineering direction across organisations and represent Lightroom Desktop's technical interests in cross-Adobe forums.
• Drive root cause analysis for complex production issues and establish long-term preventive solutions.

Engineering Excellence

• Drive high standards in performance, reliability, security, maintainability, and scalability.
• Drive initiatives to improve application startup time, responsiveness, memory efficiency, and crash rates.
• Establish team standards around testing, observability, CI/CD, release quality, and operational excellence.
• Lead adoption of AI-assisted software engineering practices to improve developer productivity.

Mentorship & People Development

• Mentor and coach senior engineers, elevating technical quality and decision-making across teams.
• Build a culture of engineering excellence through clear standards, code review, and collaborative learning.
   

Technical Skills

• Expert-level proficiency in C++, multithreading, and systems programming.
• Strong expertise in software architecture and design for complex desktop applications.
• Deep understanding of performance engineering, memory optimisation, debugging, and profiling.
• Experience building highly reliable, scalable commercial software products.
• Solid grasp of secure software development practices.
• Proven experience applying AI-assisted development tools and establishing protocols for their use within engineering teams.

Leadership & Communication

• Demonstrated experience leading large technical initiatives across multiple teams.
• Track record of mentoring and technically coaching senior engineers.
• Excellent communication and partner management skills, including the ability to influence without authority.
• Ability to translate complex technical decisions into clear narratives for non-engineering audiences.

Education & Experience

• B.Tech/M.Tech in Computer Science, or equivalent practical experience.
• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 3 years in a senior technical leadership capacity.

• Deep expertise in the Mac and Windows platforms.
• Experience with graphics, imaging, GPU acceleration, or multimedia applications — particularly relevant to Lightroom’s imaging pipeline.
• Experience influencing engineering direction and culture across organisations.
• Experience working effectively with distributed or globally located teams.

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. 

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