Senior Applied ML Engineer, Search & Relevance

JOB LEVEL

EMPLOYEE ROLE

Job description:

Adobe Fonts helps millions of creatives find and use the right type. This role owns how users discover fonts — search, relevance, recommendations, and ranking — and ships it end to end. You are a software engineer first, you turn what product and design want into reliable, well-crafted production experiences, own them in production (including on-call), and apply machine learning — embeddings, ranking, relevance, fine-tuning — as a tool for delivery, not a research agenda.

What you'll do
- Build, ship, and iterate on font-discovery experiences with product and design — from spec to production — with strong software craft: clean design, testing, code quality, and code review.
- Own search relevance and ranking: candidate generation, retrieval (embeddings / vector search), learning-to-rank, re-ranking, and relevance / search optimization.
- Build and improve recommendation and personalization surfaces (related fonts, pairings, contextual suggestions).
- Own what you ship in production: latency, scale, reliability, observability, and support for the search and recommendation services.
- Design the systems around the models: feature pipelines, low-latency serving, evaluation harnesses, A/B tests, and closed feedback loops from impressions, clicks, and usage.
- Define and defend the metrics — offline relevance and online outcomes — and debug the gap between them.
 

What we're looking for

• Software engineering (your core):

- Strong software fundamentals and best practices — design, testing, code quality, code review — plus system design and production maturity (latency, scale, reliability, observability, on-call).

- Ships and owns services end-to-end; pragmatic about build-vs-buy and tradeoffs.

• Applied ML depth in search / relevance / recommendations:

- Hands-on, working understanding of embeddings, models and fine-tuning, retrieval and ranking (ANN / vector search, learning-to-rank), relevance and search optimization, and recommendation systems.
- Solid evaluation instincts — metrics design, error analysis, offline↔online debugging — and comfort closing the loop with behavioral data (clicks, impressions, usage).
- Applies ML judgment to ship better discovery; depth without a research mandate.

- Delivery focus and product sense, end-to-end ownership, systems thinking, and cross-functional execution with product and design.

Nice to have
- Personalization at scale; feature stores; model serving infra.
- Information retrieval / search-engine internals (Elasticsearch/OpenSearch/Solr, hybrid search).
- GenAI / LLM-assisted retrieval or agentic workflows.
 

Expected Pay Range:

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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.

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!

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4. If you are applying for a role outside of your current country, ensure you review the International Resources for Relocating Employees on Inside Adobe, including the impacts to your Benefits, AIP, Equity & Payroll. 

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At Adobe, you will be immersed in an exceptional work environment that is recognized around the world. You will also be surrounded by colleagues who are committed to helping each other grow through our unique Check-In approach where ongoing feedback flows freely. If you’re looking to make an impact, Adobe's the place for you. Discover what our employees are saying about their career experiences on the Adobe Life blog and explore the meaningful benefits we offer.

Let’s Adobe together

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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.