Innovation Lab Lead

The Innovation Lab Lead drives rapid, high-impact ideation and proof-of-concept sessions with Adobe's prospective enterprise customers under the Horizon pre-sales program. Operating at the nexus of strategy, technology, and customer activation, this role designs and facilitates week-long innovation labs that translate business challenges into validated AI and agentic capability demonstrations. The Lab Lead combines strong facilitation skills with deep Adobe solution knowledge to unlock new sales pipeline opportunities and co-author the technical business cases that move deals forward.

The responsibilities below reflect core accountability for this role across customer engagements and team operations.

• Design and facilitate customer innovation labs. This includes leading early-stage discovery workshops that distill customer pain points into scoped, prototype-able scenarios aligned to Horizon's evaluation and committed build phases. Candidates should have the ability to surface high-value use cases and validate product-market fit for emerging Adobe AI and agentic capabilities.
• Collaborate closely with Adobe Technical Presales and the Lead Architect to map customer business objectives to Adobe Ecosystem Solutions (such as Gen Studio, Firefly, and CX Enterprise CoWorker) and to custom AI-driven capabilities that we ideate, design, develop, and deploy.
• Manage pre-commitment evaluation planning, ensuring customer insights translate into clear scope, success criteria, and resource plans for downstream delivery.
• Partner with Merkle strategy and delivery teams to position lab findings as business cases and roadmaps that justify Horizon build engagements.
• Develop and refine repeatable lab methodologies, playbooks, and evaluation frameworks that scale across multiple customer contexts with the Adobe Horizon (AI Pilot) program team.
• Maintain clear, executive-level communications with customers and Adobe stakeholders on innovation progress, learning, and next steps.

• Previous experience and proven ability to demonstrate workshop design and facilitation experience, with ability to guide senior technical and business stakeholders through discovery and ideation.
• Extensive experience engaging executive stakeholders with strong executive presence, including building and designing executive-level workshops, solutions, and reporting/KPIs across marketing, technology, business, brand, and finance functions.
• Deep working knowledge of at least three Adobe Experience Cloud solutions, to help bridge ideation of AI solutions into core Adobe SKUs and capabilities.
• Prior experience in pre-sales, customer innovation, or solution engineering roles with ability to rapidly scope complex, ambiguous challenges.
• Strong business acumen with ability to translate customer objectives into quantifiable value cases and technology recommendations.
• Proven experience initiating and implementing AI initiatives within organizations.
• Comfort with ambiguity and rapid iteration; ability to synthesize learning across multiple engagements and adapt approaches based on customer feedback.
• Track record of managing multi-stakeholder, time-bound engagements with competing priorities and tight delivery windows.
• Excellent presentation and communication skills, with ability to articulate technical concepts to non-technical audiences.

Preferred: experience within Financial Services, Healthcare, or Pharmaceutical organizations, which represent the largest share of the current portfolio. Experience with change management and operational efficiency is a plus. Track record of delivering trackable ROI on initiatives led.

Innovation labs consistently surface high-conviction use cases and convert prospective customers into pre-commitment evaluation or build engagements. Lab findings are synthesized into clear business cases and technical roadmaps that inform customer investment decisions. Customers experience structured, high-impact thinking that positions Merkle and Adobe as trusted, forward-looking partners. Lab playbooks and evaluation frameworks are refined and scaled across additional customer contexts.

The annual base salary range for this position is $136,000-$200,000. Placement within the salary range is based on a variety of factors, including relevant experience, knowledge, skills, and other factors permitted by law. Additionally, this position is eligible for discretionary incentive…