Code and Theory

Oct 12, 2026

Lead Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure (US)

United States

San Francisco, California, United States · New York, New York, United States · Austin, Texas, United States

AWSGCPKubernetesTerraform

About the opportunity

Code and Theory is seeking a senior cloud engineer who wants to own the full technical lifecycle of enterprise client deployments — from assessing a client's existing infrastructure and designing the integration architecture, to provisioning the environment and keeping it running in production. This is a hands-on role that also requires real client engagement: you will sit in technical working sessions, work directly with client DevOps teams, and be the person who translates security and compliance requirements into concrete infrastructure decisions.

The Machine is the agentic operating system for marketing, built by Code and Theory. It plugs into the tools marketing teams use and turns disconnected workflows into a single intelligent system, connecting brand strategy, creative production, and media performance. The Machine helps power agencies across Stagwell's network and world-leading brands.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Assess each client's cloud infrastructure, data stack, and security perimeter before any build starts — translate findings into a concrete integration plan

Design and provision client environments using Terraform — networking, IAM, container orchestration, managed storage, and secrets management across GCP, AWS, or Azure depending on the client

Deploy and operate LLM inference pods in client cloud environments — managing API integration, rate limits, latency, and failure handling without needing a data scientist in the room

Build and maintain integration layers that connect client data sources to the AI layer — you own the plumbing that makes inference useful; the data science team owns what runs on top of it

Deploy and maintain containerized workloads via Helm — orchestration, ETL workers, and AI inference pods running inside the client's cloud perimeter

Own data pipeline deployments end to end — scheduling, pagination, retry logic, and rate-limit management against client API gateways

Manage distributed ETL jobs at scale — JSON flattening, schema enforcement, and structured output delivery

Enforce data residency requirements — raw data stays inside the client's environment, only structured output leaves to our shared infrastructure

Serve as the primary technical contact for each client's DevOps and infrastructure teams throughout the engagement

Lead technical working sessions with client teams — validate configurations, confirm IAM and credential models, review cluster specs before deployment

Triage and resolve pipeline and infrastructure failures across multiple client environments simultaneously

Implement container security standards — non-root execution, read-only filesystems, startup integrity hashes, tamper protection

Mentor junior and mid-level engineers and contribute implementation patterns to the shared playbook after every client engagement

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

6+ years of cloud engineering experience — production experience on at least two of GCP, AWS, or Azure, and willing to operate across all three depending on client environment

Deep Terraform experience — you have provisioned multi-environment, multi-tenant production infrastructure from scratch, not just applied existing configurations

Comfortable with Kubernetes and Helm in production — deploying, debugging, scaling, and securing containerized workloads, not just running them

Have run data pipelines in production — you know what breaks, how to recover, and how to build retry and backoff logic that actually holds up

Hands-on experience with distributed processing at scale — not just theoretical knowledge

Enterprise API integration experience — OAuth 2.0, API key management, rate limiting, API gateways — end to end

Solid security fundamentals — container hardening, credential management, and data residency enforcement in environments where it actually matters

Have worked directly with client or customer engineering teams — comfortable leading technical conversations with enterprise DevOps and infrastructure teams, not just supporting them

You write things down — runbooks, integration notes, playbook contributions. The next engineer should be able to operate what you built

Hands-on experience integrating LLM APIs (Anthropic, OpenAI, or equivalent) into production pipelines — not as an end user, but wiring inference into systems that run at scale across real client environments

NICE TO HAVE

Experience with:

LLM inference infrastructure

Marketing technology stacks (DAM, CDP, CRM)

Multi-tenant client environments

A cloud certification (AWS Solutions Architect, GCP Professional Cloud Architect, or Azure equivalent)

Agency, consultancy, or product company background serving multiple enterprise clients simultaneously

ABOUT US

Born in 2001, Code and Theory is a digital-first creative agency that sits at the center of creativity and technology. We pride ourselves on not only solving consumer and business problems, but also helping to establish new capabilities for our clients. With a global client roster of Fortune 100s and start-ups alike, we crave the hardest problems to solve. We have teams distributed across North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. The Code and Theory global network of agencies is growing and includes Kettle, Instrument, Left Field Labs, Create Group, Current, and TrueLogic.

Striving never to be pigeonholed, we work across every major category: from tech to CPG, financial services to travel & hospitality, government and education to media and publishing. We value the collaboration with our client partners, including but not limited to Adidas, Amazon, Con Edison, Diageo, EY, J.P. Morgan Chase, Lenovo, Marriott, Mars, Microsoft, Thomson Reuters, and TikTok.

The Code and Theory network is comprised of nearly 2,000 people with 50% engineers and 50% creative talent. We’re always on the lookout for smart, driven, and forward-thinking people to join our team.

The compensation range for this role is $130,000 - $225,000 and spans multiple levels. We're open to hiring at the level that best matches the right candidate's experience. Actual compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, budget, and location.

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Lead Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure (US)

About the opportunity

WHAT YOU'LL DO

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

NICE TO HAVE

ABOUT US

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