Senior Software Development Engineer

Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) helps businesses deliver the right experience to customers at the right time. Segmentation Service plays a critical technical role in AEP’s realtime CDP. It evaluates trillions of audience segment definitions daily. These evaluations use customer profiles with behavioral and attribute data from all channels. The queries are complex and require accuracy and speed at a large scale.

This senior engineering role requires extensive expertise in high-throughput, low-latency distributed systems. You will manage a wide technical area by defining architectural direction within Segmentation Service and related AEP platform teams. Your responsibilities will affect all Adobe Customer Experience Orchestration solutions. Owning this role involves delivering solutions, not just proposing them.

What You’ll Do

• Own building and implementation of core components in the Segmentation Service engine — real-time query evaluation, incremental processing, and performance at production scale
• Develop query optimization and evaluation algorithms, including multi-query optimization and streaming evaluation approaches that hold up as segment complexity and profile volume grow
• Guide multi-functional technical initiatives across related teams, establishing architectural direction for capabilities that cross service boundaries
• Identify performance bottlenecks and build targeted solutions — reasoning about JVM tuning, GC patterns, serialization overhead, and data structure choices under high event load
• Analyze and advance core infrastructure including data ingestion, processing and storage — understanding how each impacts latency, efficiency thresholds, or failure modes at scale
• Build systems that degrade gracefully, instrument for observability, and take responsibility for operational behavior in production
• Lead architecture and code reviews — making the reasoning behind decisions clear to engineers at every level
• Heavily use AI to lead improved efficiency and iterate faster

What You’ll Need to Succeed

• 10+ years of software engineering experience in SaaS with a demonstrated history in distributed systems
• Deep proficiency in Java or Scala — including the runtime: JVM memory management, GC tuning, thread scheduling, and how allocation patterns affect tail latency at high event rates
• Proven ability to reason about system performance at scale — predict where a build breaks under load, profile production systems, and drive optimizations that improve real metrics
• Experience building or evolving query engines, stream processing pipelines, or equivalent systems where correctness and performance must coexist
• Practical experience with Kafka, Kubernetes, gRPC, and high-performance key-value or document databases — along with the discernment to determine when each is the appropriate choice
• Strong architectural thinking: understand complex, multi-service systems, identify where assumptions fail under scale, and communicate tradeoffs to technical and non-technical collaborators
• B.S. in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent experience, required; M.S. or equivalent practical depth preferred

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 [email protected] 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 $159,200 -- $301,600 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 $208,300 - $301,600


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.