Senior Community Experts Program Manager

Adobe•San Jose, CA

9d•$110,000 - $202,250

About The Position

The Community Experts Program Lead owns the end-to-end strategy, operations, and evolution of this program. This role is accountable for transforming the program from a peer-support function into a strategic, AI-enabled activation engine that drives product influence, creator advocacy, and measurable business outcomes. You will lead a program at the intersection of community management, product advocacy, and VOC intelligence. Your core mandate is threefold: Program Strategy & Evolution: Define and own the multi-year strategic direction for Adobe's Community Experts program — including tier architecture, engagement models, recognition systems, and integration with product and marketing workflows. Expert Engagement & Activation: Manage the lifecycle of Community Experts from recruitment through recognition — ensuring high engagement, sustained contribution quality, and structured channels for Experts to influence Adobe product direction. Insight Generation & Influence: Operationalize the Experts program as a structured insight channel — ensuring expert feedback is captured, synthesized, and routed to product and PMM teams in a format that shapes roadmap decisions.

Requirements

8-10 years of experience in community program management, developer/creator advocacy, or customer success in a SaaS or digital media company.
Proven track record managing structured advocacy or expert programs — including lifecycle design, engagement operations, and executive-level reporting.
Strong written communication skills with experience managing high-volume community communications, program updates, and collaborator briefings.
Analytical approach — comfortable with community metrics, engagement data, and building scorecards that demonstrate program return on investment.
Experience working cross-functionally with Product, PMM, and Marketing teams — translating community insight into business-relevant recommendations.
Ability to operate in a high-ambiguity environment — building structure, documented processes, and scalable playbooks from scratch.

Nice To Haves

Experience with community platforms (Gainsight Community / Khoros / Bettermode / Vanilla), CRM tools, or advocacy platforms.
Familiarity with Adobe's Creative Cloud or Document Cloud product portfolio — as a user, community member, or former specialist.
Experience using AI tools for operational efficiency (e.g. AI-assisted transcription, automated synthesis, communication drafting at scale).
Prior experience managing Expert or Ambassador program with measurable product influence or roadmap contribution outcomes.
Background in VOC, user research, or product operations is a strong plus.

Responsibilities

Own and evolve the strategic definition of the Community Experts program — encompassing program vision, Expert tier structure (entry, core, elite), eligibility criteria, and graduation pathways.
Design and maintain the Expert value exchange framework: define what Experts receive from Adobe (recognition, access, tools, visibility) and what Adobe expects in return (quality answers, product feedback, advocacy output).
Lead the integration of the Experts program into the broader Community 2.0 strategy — including alignment with the BASE/Bettermode platform migration, point attribution logic, and gamification mechanics.
Establish a scalable operating model for the program: detailed playbooks, onboarding frameworks, engagement cadences, and customer concern protocols.
Develop and sustain a strategic transition plan, ensuring continuity through leadership changes and ensuring the program is resilient, clearly detailed, and handover-ready.
Own the full Expert lifecycle: recruitment, onboarding, ongoing engagement, recognition, and off-boarding.
Design and run regular Expert touchpoints — including monthly roundtables, beta access program, product previews, and AMAs — using a structured Agenda Framework (Feature Focus → Engagement Patterns → Problems → Feedback Pathways).
Manage Expert communications: transition announcements, program updates, feedback requests, and recognition moments — at volume and with personalisation using templated workflows and AI-assisted drafting.
Build and maintain diverse Expert representation across Adobe's product categories (PAFEI), user types (freelancers, SMBs, agencies, in-house teams), and geographies.
Identify and address Expert burnout and engagement drop-off proactively — through participation incentive reviews, workload calibration, and periodic Expert NPS/satisfaction measurement.
Lead Adobe MAX Expert activation planning — including Expert spotlights, community presence at the event, and post-event engagement follow-up.
Operationalize the Experts program as a structured VOC channel — ensuring every roundtable and feedback session generates actionable outputs structured as Themes, Opportunity Areas, and Problem Statements.
Manage the entire feedback loop. Provide a pre-session brief five business days before. Facilitate sessions with AI-assisted transcription. Deliver a post-session summary within 48 hours. Route feedback to marketing and product development teams.
Partner with PMM and Product leads to align Expert engagement sessions with roadmap validation cycles, beta program achievements, and feature release windows.
Contribute expert-sourced insights to the VOC Insights & Advocacy Program, ensuring Expert voice is represented in the unified insight model alongside Sprinklr, UnitQ, and Gainsight signals.
Track and report influence signals: decisions impacted in roadmap, feature requests raised, bugs submitted, and marketing amplification (social posts, tutorials, AMAs) attributable to Expert engagement.
Own Expert-related configuration in BASE/Bettermode — including point attribution, tier logic, badge management, and Expert profile maintenance.
Partner with the Gainsight team to surface Expert engagement data within community health scorecards — ensuring Expert contribution quality, response rates, and CAR metrics are tracked and visible in reporting.
Build and automate Expert-related workflows using available tooling (Sprinklr, Gainsight, BASE) — minimizing manual overhead while maintaining high program quality.
Maintain accurate Expert rosters, participation tracking, and representation data — feeding into monthly metrics reports (attendance, diversity mix, engagement outcomes).
Coordinate with Trust & Safety (DSA compliance) to ensure Expert program operations meet regulatory requirements around content moderation and user data.
Serve as the primary point of contact for all Expert-related queries from PMM, Product, Marketing, and DE&C leadership.
Represent the Expert program in quarterly business reviews — presenting return on investment, influence metrics, and program health to executive collaborators.
Collaborate with the Beta Community program lead to leverage Expert cohorts as a pipeline for early product validation participants.
Partner with the AI Community Experiences team to explore how Expert-generated content can feed LLM training pipelines (Genie, Infinity, Sprinklr AI+).
Contribute to the Creator-Led AI Activation strategy — positioning Experts as the primary human demonstration layer for Adobe AI features.