Doug Ross · Raleigh–Durham, NC
Deep roots.
Quick growth.
Built to bend.
Architect, builder, and people leader. Fifteen-plus years shaping enterprise systems and growing the teams behind them — and these days, building early-stage ventures from the ground up.
01 About
Architecture, leadership,
and the work between.
I'm Doug — an architect, builder, and people leader with a strong opinion about where the interesting work lives. It's rarely inside the architecture diagram. It's in the systems you don't own, the teams that need structure as much as direction, and the customer environments where the politics are as load-bearing as the API contracts.
My work lands in three modes. As an architect, I find the shape of the solution — across AEM, the Adobe martech stack, and lately generative AI — and pressure-test it before anyone bets a budget on it. As a leader, I build the teams that ship it, investing in the enablement and career-growth scaffolding that keeps senior engineers learning. And as an enterprise navigator, I read the room — technical, political, executive — and translate between layers that don't share a language.
Most recently I was Technical Director for Adobe's Document, Creative Cloud, Firefly & GenAI Professional Services org, holding technical sign-off across F500 engagements. Before that, as Director and Principal Enterprise Architect, I supported programs retaining $500M+ in annual revenue, built two customer-facing teams from scratch, and authored the AEM curriculum that became Adobe's internal standard.
Today I'm CTO at two early-stage ventures: Producycle, procurement intelligence for school nutrition programs, and 94 Alpacas, multi-agent tooling for solopreneurs. Same work, smaller room — finding the shape of the solution, building the team around it, and staying hands-on with the agentic patterns and AI-assisted stack that let a small team punch above its weight.
02 Experience
Fifteen years of
building and leading.
From AEM implementations to Firefly & GenAI sign-off authority to building two early-stage ventures — a quick tour of the path here.
- Present Jul 2026
Chief Technology Officer
Producycle · Procurement intelligence for school nutrition
- Leads technology for a procurement-intelligence platform that helps school Food & Nutrition Services teams prove what they buy and catch what they overpay.
- Platform checks vendor invoices line by line against awarded bid prices — flagging price discrepancies, Buy American compliance gaps, and USDA Foods commodity drawdowns, and tagging organic and local purchases for reporting.
- Present Dec 2024
Founder & Chief Technology Officer
94 Alpacas · Early-stage venture
- Founding hands-on technical lead for a multi-agent AI mobile application focused on social-media and marketing automation for solopreneurs and small business owners.
- Architected a multi-agent system using Claude models, a self-hosted Memgraph graph database, and N8N for orchestration; OAuth/Auth0 across TikTok, Pinterest, and other social APIs.
- Deploys on Docker, AWS, and Google Cloud Run; daily development on a modern AI-assisted stack (Cursor, Claude Code, BMAD).
- Oct 2025 Jul 2024
Technical Director, DMe Professional Services
Adobe Inc. · Document, Creative Cloud, Firefly & GenAI Pro Services
- Held technical sign-off authority for pre-sales engagements across Firefly, GenAI, and Creative Cloud Professional Services — reviewed the technical approach on every F500 opportunity before it reached the customer.
- Directed and matured technical approaches across Firefly, GenAI, Document Cloud, and Creative Cloud professional services teams, ensuring global alignment of consulting practices across multiple business units.
- Led direct reports and matrixed engineers across complex enterprise accounts — driving progress, resolving technical and delivery challenges, and maintaining alignment across the seam where technical, business, and stakeholder dimensions met.
- Shaped Adobe's broader GenAI product direction through collaboration with product teams on Firefly image, video, and audio APIs — surfacing enterprise requirements around observability, governance, and predictability.
- Dec 2023 Dec 2020
Director, Principal Architect & Lead Enterprise Architect
Adobe Inc. · Success Services — Document Cloud & GenAI
- Architected engagement models and rapid-response frameworks supporting programs that retained $500M+ in annual Adobe revenue; the rapid-response motion for renewal-risk accounts contributed $100M+ in additional risk mitigation.
- Built and developed two customer-facing teams from scratch within Adobe Customer Success — establishing engagement methodologies, operational frameworks, and enablement programs that scaled team capability across North America.
- Authored the AEM enablement curriculum adopted as Adobe's official internal training standard, plus the standardized technical interview methodology adopted org-wide for consultant hiring; mentored senior technical leaders through career transitions and promotions.
- Spearheaded AI-driven transformation engagements for Fortune 100 customers — designing scalable creative workflow solutions and influencing the Adobe product roadmap through direct feedback on adoption blockers.
- Dec 2020 Feb 2016
Principal Consultant, Adobe Experience Manager
Adobe Inc. · Enterprise Consulting
- Led strategy, architecture, and delivery for 7+ multi-million-dollar AEM implementations for Fortune 100 customers in travel, healthcare, and financial services.
- Operated as full-stack technical authority across the Adobe martech ecosystem: AEM Sites & Assets, Analytics, Target, Audience Manager, Campaign, Marketo, Workfront, Real-Time CDP, CJA, and Experience Platform.
- Delivered official Adobe-certified AEM developer and administrator trainings; co-developed custom partner enablement for Accenture's India AEM practice.
- Jun 2024 Feb 2024
AEM Engineer & Team Lead
Virtual Workgroup Technologies Corp. · Contract — U.S. Marshals Service
- Led a contracted development team for a multi-year digital forms conversion initiative for the U.S. Marshals Service; gathered requirements with agency stakeholders and enabled team members on AEM Forms.
- Designed interactive PDF forms and Adobe Workbench workflows; architected reusable workflow steps to reduce deployment complexity across the program.
- Feb 2016 Jul 2015
Adobe AEM Consultant
Independent Consulting
- Architected AEM implementations for enterprise customers; developed components, templates, product extensions, and integrations while operating simultaneously as technical architect, developer, engagement manager, and account manager.
- Jun 2015 Oct 2014
Engagement Manager & Director, Product Development
Xumak LLC
- Managed agile delivery teams of 3–10 across 20+ enterprise accounts on AEM and Magnolia CMS implementations.
- Directed a 5-person team as head of product development, overseeing Xumak's proprietary AEM composing library and infrastructure deployment framework.
- Developed a hybrid Waterfall/Agile project delivery methodology adopted as Xumak's default standard.
- Oct 2014 Jul 2010
Senior Consultant
Xumak LLC
- Delivered architecture and development for AEM implementations from CQ 5.3 through AEM 6.4; led performance testing and stabilization for authoring and publishing environments.
- Delivered official Adobe-certified AEM trainings; co-developed custom partner enablement for Accenture India in partnership with Adobe Learning Services.
03 Selected Work
What I've been building —
large and small.
A handful of public-facing efforts I've worked on, from venture-scale to side-of-the-desk experiments.
-
94 Alpacas
Multi-agent AI for solopreneurs
An early-stage venture building multi-agent tooling for solopreneurs and small businesses — automating social-media and marketing workflows. Built on Claude models, a self-hosted Memgraph graph database, and N8N orchestration; deployed across Docker, AWS, and Google Cloud Run.
-
Producycle
Prove what you buy. Catch what you overpay.
Procurement intelligence for school nutrition programs. Producycle reads vendor invoices and checks every line against awarded bid prices — flagging overcharges, Buy American compliance gaps, and USDA Foods commodity drawdowns, and tagging organic and local purchases for reporting. A stack of invoices becomes actionable findings in about 30 minutes.
-
Marque
A bounty board for ideas worth pursuing
A small bounty-board web app where ideas worth pursuing get posted, claimed, submitted, and resolved. Open bounties earn points and move through admin/reviewer states from open → claimed → resolved.
-
Keydraw
Keyboard-first, mouse-optional diagramming
A keyboard-focused diagramming app for personal use. Press 's' for shapes, arrows to nudge, and barely touch the mouse. Fully client-side, container-ready via Docker.
04 Speaking & Writing
On stage —
and on the page.
Sessions and hands-on labs I co-presented during my time as a Principal Consultant at Adobe, plus the occasional long-form piece on the work itself.
-
Creating Regression Test Content Using AEM Content Builder
How to use the AEM Content Builder to programmatically generate clean, reusable regression test content — replacing manual page-by-page setup with a repeatable script so QA can cover more ground with less drag.
- Doug Ross · AEM Architect & Consultant, Adobe Inc.
-
Build, Configure, Integrate Adobe Experience Manager and Target in One Day
A hands-on lab on the AEM ↔ Adobe Target integration — installing, configuring, and wiring it together end-to-end so marketers can author testable variations as Experience Fragments in AEM and use them directly in Target, instead of hand-rolling HTML, CSS, and JS variations.
- Varun Mitra · Technical Enablement Delivery SME, Adobe
- Doug Ross · Principal Consultant, Adobe
-
Tips for Building Engaging B2B Portals Using Adobe Experience Manager Sites
B2B portals give customers, partners, and key stakeholders access to critical information and let them transact and engage at a deeper level. Successful design hinges on secure access across web and mobile, managing multiple integrations, rapid content creation, and contextual delivery — common paradigms for securing an AEM-driven portal, integrating patterns that increase engagement, and content architecture that delivers individualized experiences.
- Doug Ross · Principal Consultant, Adobe
-
Best Practices to Get to Market Fast with Adobe Experience Manager Sites
Implementing a new web CMS or redesigning an existing experience can be lengthy and complex — and that delay holds back the value you can deliver to customers. A run through the AEM Sites best practices, production-ready components, and out-of-the-box capabilities that help teams launch digital properties quickly without compromising design or flexibility.
- Doug Ross · Principal Consultant, Adobe
- — · Product Marketing Manager, Adobe
05 Contact
Got something interesting?
Let's talk.
Speaking invitations, collaborations, or comparing notes on architecture and AI — email is the fastest path, and I read everything.
Send a note to [email protected]