How Adobe Pays

Individual contributor ladder — Intern through P60

Management ladder — EM2 through Director

Executive and board — VP through Board

Disclosed executive layer

Track divergence

Hierarchy qualifications and legacy structures

• Adobe job postings and salary datasets expose titles such as Computer Scientist, Senior Computer Scientist and Principal Scientist alongside the P10 to P60 numbering, but Adobe has never published a single global grade chart.
• The crosswalk is most reliable for software and technical roles and progressively less precise for sales, marketing, design and corporate functions, where Adobe can place equivalent scope differently.
• Assumed awards from the Magento and Semrush acquisitions do not establish a separate current workforce hierarchy. They preserve legacy awards for their holders only.
• VP, SVP, EVP and CEO are corporate titles rather than a hidden grade number, so this report treats them as title tiers rather than claiming a numeric band.
• The independent director row is a governance package, not an employment band, and is excluded from the range chart.

Peer-level mapping

Office and market catalogue — calibration factors versus San Jose

Adobe does not publish city-level headcount, so this catalogue does not rank offices by employee count. Bangalore and Noida are identified as the two largest non-US properties by disclosed floor area.

San Jose anchor medians — the basis of every modeled cell

• The San Jose column is the anchor. P10 through P60 medians come from Levels.fyi United States software-engineering records; the management rows are calibrated to the same dataset's manager and director families.
• The P40 public sample is sparse enough that it can read below P30. The anchor smooths P40 for monotonic comparison rather than treating a sampling artefact as an Adobe policy.
• Bangalore P30 is a direct observation at 3.62 million rupees base, 1.59 million rupees annualized stock and 0.49 million rupees bonus for a 5.69 million rupee package.
• India total compensation runs at roughly 16 percent of the United States anchor at P10 and rises towards 44 percent at P60, because senior Indian packages carry a much larger equity component.
• EVP and CEO rows are proxy disclosures converted for comparison only. They are global executive values, not a local pay range in any selected city.

Executive incentive targets — percent of salary

Named-executive outcomes

• Simple 2019 Plan utilisation was 56.8 percent at 28 November 2025, calculated as 76.0 million reserved less 32.8 million available. That is a capacity measure and not outstanding dilution.
• Unrecognised stock compensation was about $3.24 billion with a weighted-average recognition period of 2.19 years.
• Because grants and forfeitures continued after the FY2025 close, the precise ungranted balance following the April 2026 amendment is not publicly disclosed.
• A separate $25 billion repurchase authorisation running to April 2030 can offset dilution at company level, but it does nothing for an individual employee whose value still depends on vesting and share price.

Equity plan capacity and grant activity

Vesting — common reported employee schedule

Employee restricted stock units generally vest over four years, and public employee reports commonly show 25 percent at the first anniversary followed by a quarterly cadence. Named executive awards granted in FY2025 vest 6.25 percent quarterly from the outset. Performance shares are a single three-year cliff on certification, and independent director awards vest in full at the next annual meeting.

Eligibility by hierarchy level

• Restricted stock units are the award type below VP. Performance shares are described as a key employee and executive programme and are generally a VP and above instrument, so reading performance shares as the start of all equity is wrong.
• Public packages show annualized stock at P10 in both the United States and India, but Adobe publishes no minimum eligible band, no standard grant table and no guarantee that every employee receives a grant.
• Grant timing is the one part of employee equity with real visibility: annual non-executive awards use a fixed January grant date, and new-hire and promotion grants use specified monthly dates.
• Annualized value ranges observed in public submissions run roughly $15,000 to $36,000 at P10, $56,000 to $139,000 at P30, $100,000 to $249,000 at P60, $132,000 to $330,000 at director and $420,000 to $1.05 million at VP.

Indicative annual grant value by band — San Jose

Annualized planning value (±25%), not the face value of every new-hire grant. Share equivalents use the $271.23 reference price at 25 August 2026 close and ignore plan valuation rules and PSU performance. Highlighted rows are disclosed grant-date stock awards.

Named executive target equity

Adobe renamed its business segments during 2026, so Form 4 filings can show David Wadhwani as President, Creativity and Productivity and Anil Chakravarthy as President, Customer Experience Orchestration, while the FY2025 proxy uses Digital Media and Digital Experience. The people and the pay are the same. Louise Pentland's FY2025 cash column includes a $2.0 million signing bonus on top of her $415,714 annual incentive, and a July 2026 retention letter added transition-period severance, continued health coverage and partial equity acceleration.

Board compensation framework

Actual FY2025 totals for continuing directors generally ran between about $385,000 and $460,000. No stock options were granted to directors.

Not publicly disclosed

Modeled promotion planning timeline

Grant timing gives better visibility for equity than for cash. Annual non-executive equity awards use a fixed January grant date, and new-hire and promotion grants use specified monthly dates. A prior proxy disclosure described rewards reviews twice a year alongside an annual pay review, but no current global calendar is published.

Dataset summary

City-level H-1B wage history

All-years aggregates. P25/P75 are rounded reconstruction values marked modeled; medians and record counts are the stronger fields.

Selected title / worksite records

Evidence classification

Explicit “Not publicly disclosed” index

Known gaps and diligence before relying on a cell

1. 1The three bundles disagree on the VP and SVP rows. One models VP total compensation at $1.5 million and SVP at $4.0 million, the other at $1.2 million and $4.5 million. This report uses $1.5 million and $4.0 million because they match the $1.23 million to $1.88 million and $3.28 million to $5.00 million ranges published in the same bundle's leadership table. Neither figure is an Adobe disclosure.
2. 2The bundles use different foreign exchange snapshots, 6 August 2026 and 25 August 2026. This report standardises on the 25 August 2026 snapshot, which covers every currency used here.
3. 3City calibration factors are merged from two independent models. Cities present in only one bundle, including McLean, Edinburgh, Dublin, Hamburg, Basel and Tokyo, carry that bundle's factor rescaled onto the San Jose anchor, so they are a grade less reliable than the directly observed markets.
4. 4The public P40 sample can read below P30 because submissions are sparse and the role and location mix differs. The anchor smooths P40; the underlying observation is nearer $299,000 total compensation.
5. 5Bundles disagree on the annualized director equity component, at $220,000 against $170,000. This report uses a $165,000 residual so that base plus bonus plus equity reconciles to the observed $581,000 director total.
6. 6H1BData's search index and live page cover different record scopes and cannot be merged. H1BGrader, H1BData.net, MyVisaJobs and Ellis each report a different FY2025 median between $165,000 and $190,913.
7. 7Adobe does not publish a geographic revenue split in any reviewed source, so the revenue panel shows total and quarterly revenue alongside the disclosed workforce split rather than a regional breakdown.
8. 8Segment names changed during 2026. Form 4 filings show Creativity and Productivity and Customer Experience Orchestration where the FY2025 proxy shows Digital Media and Digital Experience.
9. 9No companywide 2026 salary hike percentage, pay freeze, salary cut, campus offer revision or off-cycle correction was located in any source.

FX rates used — 1 USD equals, snapshot 2026-08-25

Single-date conversion layer for comparability; it ignores payroll-date FX, tax, purchasing power, benefits valuation and hedging. Compensation intelligence, not legal, tax, investment, immigration or employment advice.

Source register — 14 sources

Growth has been steady rather than dramatic, at roughly 2 percent a year, while attrition rose by a third between FY2023 and FY2025. Adobe does not publish city-level headcount, so the only geographic signal in the filings is the roughly even split between the United States and the rest of the world.

Revenue and workforce distribution

Adobe does not publish a geographic revenue split in any source reviewed for this report, so this panel shows the disclosed total and quarterly revenue alongside the workforce split rather than a regional breakdown.