The start of something new

By Adobe Life Team

Posted on 03-22-2021

When you ask Adi Muraru why he joined Adobe, his answer is immediate:

“Innovation.”

Adi has always been interested in finding new and creative ways to solve problems, which is what drew him to Adobe more than 10 years ago. Since then, he’s worked on teams that have developed a number of emerging and pioneering technologies, including Primetime, Audience Manager, Experience Manager, and more.

Now the Principal Scientist for Adobe Romania, Adi says that he still is energized every day by the projects he works on and, more importantly, the people he works with.

An exciting emerging field

Adi actually started his career in research, working as a scientific software engineer at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. After completing his PhD at Politehnica University of Bucharest, he found that his interests were pulling him toward working in commercial industry rather than academia. “I was really interested in solving problems, not necessarily just doing the research,” he said.

He worked at Oracle for a brief time after leaving CERN, but that position wasn’t the right fit. He was soon drawn to Adobe, which at the time had only been operating in Romania for about three years.

“What attracted me was the prospect of working on big data, an emerging field at that time,” he explained. “It wasn’t just that, though. I was impressed that Adobe was willing to invest in that space when other companies were overlooking it.”

Big data was an exciting new field, and working with it allowed Adi to apply his knowledge in ways that he hadn’t been able to in his previous positions—and to solve problems that had never been solved before. “It was a completely new thing; it was equivalent to what advanced AI is now,” he said, “but what drew me in was that I could see the potential for how we could use it—and how we could align it with Adobe products.”

New ways to solve problems

Joining Adobe Romania turned out to be the right decision for Adi. The team he started in eventually grew and evolved into what we now know as the Digital Experience group, but at the time, the team was small and somewhat experimental. “It felt like we were a startup,” Adi said.

His first project was called SaasBase, which he describes as half research, half figuring out how to make things better for Adobe customers. “That first project really gave me an idea of what Adobe could do, investing in those emerging ideas,” he said. “I think fondly about that team. I still have colleagues from those early days, and we all still relate to that project so many years later. That means a lot.”

As that team grew in those early years, Adi worked on products like Primetime and Adobe Audience Manager, and saw for the first time a real product benefitting specifically from his knowledge. He eventually worked his way up to Principal Scientist in Romania, his current role, where he embraces that same mentality of adaptability. While he is sometimes less hands-on with projects than he was previously, he now enjoys a wider view across projects and teams. “I’m exposed to all sorts of teams, getting to work with people from other functions and sites,” he said. “I think it’s better for me. I like being able to see more of the big picture while still staying in touch with the teams doing the real work.”

Values make the difference

Back to the question of why Adi joined Adobe and why he’s stayed at the company for more than 10 years, he says that Adobe’s values resonate with him and his own outlook on the world. From day one, he could see a stark difference in how Adobe operates compared to his previous academic and employment experiences.

“Honest people, genuine people—they’re in all corners of the company. The values I’ve seen here in Adobe match my own brand,” he said. “People are truly involved here. I see people trying to solve hard problems, pushing the limits and finding new solutions. I see people always trying to improve, figure out a better way to do things. It’s inspiring—and part of being exceptional is inspiring others to be exceptional.”

Innovation, of course, also continues to be a big factor in Adi’s work, as well as the work of the team in Romania. Currently, Adi and team are working on what they’re calling Experience Edge, a centralized interface that unifies a single system from disparate data systems that were developed by Adobe and other companies it acquired. While that sounds simple enough to a layperson, Adi says that the idea was originally just a “crazy pitch” that seemed impractical, but the team has made it a reality.

“To me, that’s innovation: take this idea and transform it into something better,” he said. “We took these different systems and made them operate together as one for the customer, making their work easier and faster—and it simplifies the way we maintain our systems, too.”

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