The Machine is the agentic operating system for marketing, built by Code & 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. We're looking for a Principal Engineer to help lead architecture and technical direction while directing a matrixed group of DevOps, infrastructure, and data engineering professionals.
This is a hands-on technical leadership role. You'll set the architectural vision, raise the bar on engineering quality and velocity, and drive how AI reshapes the way we build and operate software.
Our engineers are AI native and engage in and advance the state of the art in the practice of software development flow with AI.
WHAT YOU'LL DO- Lead cloud architecture across the organization, bringing deep expertise in at least one major cloud provider and the ability to translate those patterns into multi-cloud environments
- Direct DevOps strategy with a relentless focus on quality, efficiency, and flow, treating AI as a core lever for improving how the team ships and operates -- this spans building AI tooling hands-on and influencing teams across engineering to adopt low-friction, AI-powered production workflows
- Help shape backend architecture and development, setting standards and making the key technical decisions that the team builds against
- Evolve the data engineering practice, applying broad and deep knowledge across pipelines, storage, and processing to keep our data infrastructure reliable and scalable
- Provide people leadership for a matrixed team spanning DevOps, infrastructure, and data engineering, mentoring engineers and coordinating across reporting lines to deliver as one team
WHAT YOU'LL NEED- Deep, demonstrated expertise in cloud architecture, with mastery of one major cloud provider (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and proven ability to design and reason about multi-cloud environments
- Strong backend development background with a track record of architecting and shipping production systems
- Broad and deep data engineering knowledge spanning ingestion, transformation, warehousing, and the tradeoffs between them
- A DevOps mindset oriented toward measurable improvements in quality, efficiency, and flow, with conviction about where AI accelerates engineering work
- Experience leading engineers, including in matrixed or cross-functional structures where influence matters as much as authority
The target range of base compensation for this role is $180,000 - $250,000. Actual compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, and location.
