Director, Engineering Operations (Chief of Staff to VP of Engineering, Adobe Express)

Adobe•San Jose, CA

About The Position

This role exists to make sure Engineering actually delivers on what matters. The Director, Engineering Operations is a force multiplier to the VP of Engineering, Adobe Express—driving alignment across leaders, forcing decisions when things stall, and ensuring cross-cutting initiatives land. If priorities are unclear, you surface and resolve it. If decisions are lingering, you push them to closure. If execution drifts, you bring it back on track. This is not a coordination role. You will work directly with senior engineering leaders, challenge assumptions, and drive outcomes without formal authority.

Requirements

8–12+ years in Strategy & Operations, Business Operations, Chief of Staff, or Program Leadership roles.
Background in consulting, business operations, or large-scale program delivery.
Strong experience working with Engineering organizations in complex, fast-moving environments.
Technical fluency: able to understand architecture discussions, engineering tradeoffs, and system constraints well enough to challenge and drive decisions (without being the architect).
Proven ability to influence senior engineering leaders and drive outcomes without authority.
Exceptional communication—clear, direct, and able to cut through ambiguity.
High judgment and low tolerance for drift or lack of accountability.

Nice To Haves

Experience supporting VP/SVP-level Engineering leaders.
Experience in product/platform environments with significant scale and complexity.
Exposure to modern engineering systems (distributed systems, AI/ML workflows, platform architectures).

Responsibilities

Drive Cross-Org Execution
Drive progress on the most critical, cross-cutting Engineering initiatives (platform migrations, reliability, AI/agentic systems, infra transformations, org-wide process changes).
Maintain a clear view of priorities, dependencies, and risks across pillars—and continuously pressure-test alignment.
Identify where work is misaligned to top priorities and force tradeoff conversations.
Force Decisions & Closure
Ensure leadership discussions result in decisions—not open threads.
Drive clear ownership, timelines, and follow-through on every major action.
Relentlessly close loops.
Nothing should sit unresolved across staff or leadership forums.
Leadership Cadence (Run It Like an Operating System)
Own Engineering leadership cadence (staff, reviews, offsites) with a focus on signal, decisions, and outcomes.
Cut noise.
Drive structured discussions with clear inputs and outputs.
Maintain high-quality artifacts: decision logs, action trackers, initiative views.
Cross-Functional Alignment
Work across Engineering, Product, Design, Data, and partner teams to ensure priorities are aligned and sequenced correctly.
Step into misaligned situations and drive resolution directly with leaders.
Represent the VP of Engineering, Adobe Express in forums where needed to maintain momentum.
Execution Visibility & Insights
Provide a real-time, honest view of initiative health, risks, and tradeoffs.
Synthesize complex technical and organizational inputs into clear, actionable insights.
Standardize how progress and risks are surfaced—no surprises.
Targeted Deep Dives (When Things Go Sideways)
Go deep enough to understand why something is off track (technical, organizational, or process).
Bring back clear options and drive teams to resolution.
Do not become the execution layer—drive accountability through leaders.