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

• Manage one or more pods of software engineers building our flagship product.
• 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 – which 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

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
• Expertise with AI-enabled development tools and workflows to accelerate engineering, automation, debugging, and operational tasks
• Experience orchestrating multi-step AI or agent-driven workflows, including selecting appropriate models, tools, and execution patterns for different use cases
• Strong judgment reviewing and hardening AI-assisted output for security, scalability, maintainability, and architectural fit
• Experience building or maintaining prompts, evaluation frameworks, documentation, or operational context systems that improve engineering velocity and reliability
• Familiarity with automated evaluation and feedback loops for AI-enabled systems and workflows

NICE TO HAVE

• Experience in agency, consultancy, or enterprise SaaS organizations
• Front-end development experience that lets you collaborate fluently across the full stack

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 $200,000 - $260,000 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.