Divya Jain’s beginning with Adobe and machine learning

There’s no doubt that artificial intelligence and machine learning has been transforming industries and businesses. And behind these technologies are incredibly smart and talented people. But how does someone get interested in machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) in the first place? With Divya Jain, she explains it all had to do with being in the right place at the right time.

Divya, who joined Adobe last month, is the Director of the Machine Learning Platform on the Adobe Sensei & Search team. In her role, she’ll be taking a wholistic look at Adobe’s Machine Learning Platform, with the basic concept of making machine learning capabilities available for anybody who’s looking to implement or use them. As explained by Divya, “The main driver for the Machine learning platform is to democratize ML/AI. This Platform will bring all types of ML frameworks together and makes things easier for developers to build and deploy a variety of ML models. It’ll be a common framework for sharing data and models across Adobe.”

As to how she first got started working in the realm of AI and ML, she explains “I remember first getting interested in AI and ML when I was working on content analysis at a startup. I remember thinking that something was missing though—the technology we were using was good at solving problems at hand, but there had to be something more. I began reading more research papers, and I enrolled in a graduate program at Stanford on data mining and analysis. I kept thinking that this field can really help users be more productive. It just so happens that the tech industry was starting to look more into AI and ML at this time too, so when I finished my course, I was ready to dive right in and apply what I had learned.”

Unique problems and unique people

With a long history working at various tech companies since then, Divya explains that the interesting AI and ML challenges at Adobe are what drew her to work here. “The problems and challenges we’re solving here are so unique. Most companies are solving the problem of analyzing the content after it has been created, whereas Adobe is using AI/ML to help create the content. From what I’ve seen in the industry, Adobe is already using the state of art AI and ML deep learning models in products for real world use cases and is much ahead in image and video analysis as compared to other companies.” she said.

But the impact and pride in our products were not the only things that drew Divya to Adobe. It was also the people she met. During her interview process, she was surprised by all the genuine, talented and unique people she met. “Since joining, I’ve felt very comfortable here. There’s a wide range of people from different backgrounds and experiences who give their input on projects from different perspective and it feels really good to be part of such an amazing team.”

Technology as a tool

On Divya’s off-time, when she’s not teaching a computer how to learn as much as possible, she’s growing her own knowledge. A natural learn-it-all, Divya says she loves “meeting new people and sharing knowledge and information with each other. I’m part of a lot of different mentoring programs, which support women in technology. The way I see it, if my experience can help others, then I want to give back.”

For someone who’s gained years of experience working in the technology industry, her best piece of advice others looking to pursue a career in tech is that, “This is the best time to do it. There are a lot of areas where we desperately need innovation. Technology is a tool, so don’t be scared of it—use it to your own benefit.”

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