Principal Product Designer, Emerging Agents

The opportunity

We are seeking a Principal Designer to define the future of human–AI collaboration across Adobe’s ecosystem. This role focuses on agentic systems operating across complex creative and enterprise workflows. You will shape the interaction paradigms that govern delegation, control, evaluation, and trust.

This is a systems design role focused on AI behavior, orchestration, and adaptive interfaces. We are looking for a designer who works directly with models, prototypes in code, and treats AI systems as a design material.

What you’ll do

This role demands a systems thinker operating across strategy and implementation. You will define interaction paradigms, prototype AI behaviors, and align research, engineering, and design around a coherent vision.

Define New Interaction Paradigms for Agentic Systems

• Establish mental models for delegation, collaboration, and control between humans and AI agents.
• Design interaction frameworks for multi-step workflows and tool-using systems.
• Define how users inspect reasoning, guide autonomous behavior, and balance prompt-based and structured interaction.

Design for Trust, Transparency & Evaluation

• Create mechanisms that make AI reasoning legible, including confidence indicators, provenance, and evaluation UX.
• Design failure recovery and escalation models.
• Contribute to guardrails that balance capability with safety.

Prototype AI-Native Experiences

• Work directly with large language models and agent frameworks.
• Write and refine prompts, skills, system instructions, and behavioral constraints to shape system behavior.
• Prototype using code, scripting, or AI tooling.
• Rapidly iterate through build → test → refine cycles in close partnership with research and engineering.

Shape Context-Aware & Brand-Aware Systems

• Design systems that understand creative context, enterprise constraints, memory, and personalization.
• Contribute to the evolution of AI-native components within Adobe’s design system.

Drive Strategic & Org-Level Impact

• Influence senior leadership through compelling system visions and working prototypes.
• Align cross-functional teams around AI interaction strategy.
• Mentor designers working in emerging AI spaces and elevate the craft of behavior design across the organization.

What you'll bring

We are redefining what it means to be a designer at the Principal level in the age of AI.

Core Experience

• 10+ years of experience in product, systems, or interaction design.
• Demonstrated experience defining and shipping AI-native or agent-based systems.
• Experience designing for creative tools or deep familiarity with creative workflows and processes.
• Deep systems thinking with experience designing platforms or complex workflows.
• Hands-on experience working with large language models and designing adaptive or generative interfaces, including dynamic UI, tool selection, and orchestration layers.
• Comfort prototyping in code and contributing production-quality implementations alongside engineering teams.
• Experience driving cross-functional alignment on ambiguous, emerging technology initiatives.

Additional Depth

• Experience designing enterprise AI workflows.
• Familiarity with multi-agent orchestration patterns
• Experience integrating first- and third-party AI systems.
• Background in automation design, developer tooling, or platform ecosystems.
• Accessibility expertise in AI-driven interfaces.

Preferred Accessibility Design Skills:

• Experience designing accessible and inclusive interfaces for people with disabilities.
• Understanding of applying WCAG conformance criteria in design, specifically testing comps, wireframes, and prototypes for accessibility standards.
• Accessibility certifications CPACC, WAS, CPWA, or ADS from the IAAP preferred.

You think in behaviors, systems, and capabilities, not just screens, flows, and features.

You treat AI systems as a design material. You’ve built AI workflows or agent prototypes and understand how model behavior shifts under constraint, how tools are invoked, and how memory and guardrails shape outcomes.

You are energized by ambiguity. Designing agentic systems means working with emergent behavior and evolving systems. Rather than waiting for clarity, you create it through prototypes and collaboration with research and engineering.

You are opinionated about the future of AI-native workflows and excited to help shape new ways of working. Most importantly, you believe AI should expand human creativity and capability. You design systems that empower people, not replace them.

How to apply

To be considered for this role, please submit your resume and portfolio. We’re especially interested in systems you’ve defined, AI workflows you’ve built, and evidence of working directly with intelligent systems.

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 $175,600 -- $334,500 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.

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.