Lead DevOps Engineer

Digital Agency Jobs; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 160,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Great benefits

Hybrid/Remote options

Learning & development resources

Job summary

Real Chemistry is hiring a Lead DevOps Engineer to shape deployment, security, and reliability across client environments. You will own platform operations, work with client security teams, and drive observability and CI/CD in a growing, regulated setting.

You will lead a small team, emphasize responsible AI-driven changes, and coordinate with IT and security partners to ensure audit readiness while maintaining high deployment velocity.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in DevOps, SRE, or infrastructure engineering with leadership experience.
• Experience running serverless or managed-service infrastructure in production.
• Experience deploying software inside client environments and coordinating with security/Infra teams.
• Track record hiring engineers and running technical interview loops.
• Comfort directing AI-assisted infrastructure changes with human-in-the-loop when needed.
• Ability to adapt standards to constraints without losing thread.
• Bonus: pharma or regulated marketing data experience.

Responsibilities

• Design and drive platform deployment across multiple environments, parameterized and repeatable.
• Collaborate with client infrastructure and security teams to go live without forking the product.
• Oversee data stores backup, restore, failover testing, capacity, and secure connectivity.
• Lead platform observability, security, and CI/CD with cross-team partners for audit readiness.
• Establish incident response and on-call practices as the team grows.
• Set guardrails for AI-assisted changes to infrastructure code.

Skills

DevOps leadership

SRE

Serverless infra

Client environments

Hiring and interviewing

AI-driven changes

Adaptability

Regulated marketing exposure

Job description

At Real Chemistry, making the world a healthier place isn’t just an aspiration—it’s our everyday reality. Our drive to transform healthcare is informed by our blend of deep scientific expertise, human-centred creativity, and AI-driven insights, fostering a unique environment where innovation thrives and our people are impact-obsessed. As a global agency, we provide a full suite of services across healthcare communications and marketing to our clients, including top players in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries.

Our #LifeatRealChem culture is rooted in our people—we believe we are best together and are committed to excellence for both our clients and colleagues. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting your career, if you share our passion for healthcare and connection, we invite you to explore our opportunities.

Discover your purpose. Embrace innovation. Experience #LifeatRealChem.

Real Chemistry Media

Real Chemistry Media is transforming how medical and healthcare marketers engage healthcare professionals (HCPs) and consumers through data, technology, and omnichannel innovation. Real Chemistry Media's product and technology teams sit at the heart of this meaningful work by building tools that increase impact. In support of our mission to help life-changing medicines and therapies reach their full market potential, we are building an enterprise

platform for omnichannel orchestration in healthcare marketing.

Our technology enables healthcare organizations to design, deploy, and optimize HCP journeys through a scalable, self-service product that connects to their existing marketing and data systems. The platform is live with early users and on track with rapid growth milestones, so the decisions made over the next year will be influential in shaping the product's future.

We are hiring a Lead DevOps Engineer to lead how the platform is built, deployed, and operated — reliably, securely, and across more than one environment, including our clients' own. You will build the operational practices this requires from the ground up and work directly with client infrastructure and security teams to get there. The team is small and we're building a lot, so there are a lot of opportunities for ownership and influence.

What You'll Do:

• Design and drive how the platform is deployed, so it can run reliably in more than one environment — parameterized, repeatable, and documented well enough for someone else's cloud team to operate alongside you.
• Work directly with client infrastructure and security teams to get the platform live in their environment, without forking the product to do it.
• Direct the operational posture of our data stores — backup and restore, failover testing, capacity, and secure connectivity.
• Drive platform-level observability, security, and CI/CD, partnering with Real Chemistry's corporate IT, DevSecOps, and security teams on audit readiness as a shared responsibility.
• Establish incident response and on-call practice as the team grows.
• Set standards for agentic or AI-assisted changes to infrastructure code, including the guardrails that keep a generated change safe to apply.

This position is a perfect fit for you if:

• You are adaptable, resilient, and OK with adjusting your scope, responsibilities, and focus as we grow. When things change, so do we. We’re always evolving.
• You are proactive, driven, and resourceful with strong prioritization skills and a desire to dive into the data.
• You are highly organized self-starter, able to work independently and under tight deadlines.

What You Should Have:

• 8+ years in DevOps, SRE, or infrastructure engineering, including 2+ years leading a team.
• Experience running serverless or managed-service infrastructure in production, not just container fleets.
• Experience deploying and operating software inside environments you don't fully control — a client's cloud account, a regulated environment, or similar — and working directly with their security and infrastructure teams to get there.
• Track record hiring and growing engineers, and running a technical interview loop from scratch.
• Comfortable directing and reviewing agentic or AI-assisted changes to infrastructure code, with the judgment to know what needs a human in the loop.
• Strong opinions, loosely held — and evidence of adapting your own standards to someone else's constraints without losing the thread.
• Comfort with ambiguity and a fast-moving, still-small engineering org.
• Bonus points for pharma or HCP marketing experience — or any complex, regulated marketing data environment (ad tech, financial services marketing, health systems).

Pay Range: $160,000-$180,000

This is the pay range the Company believes it will pay for this position at the time of this posting. Consistent with applicable law, compensation will be determined based on job-related, non-discriminatory factors including but not limited to work experience, skills, certifications, and geographical location. The Company reserves the right to modify this pay range at any time.

Real Chemistry is proud to be Great Place to Work certified; check out what our people shared about our culture and workplace on our Great Places to Work Profile here.

We believe we can do our best when feeling our best, which is why we’ve put together a benefits program designed to give you the support you and your family need at every stage of life. Real Chemistry offers a comprehensive benefit program and perks, tailored to your region. Globally, this includes offices in our key markets with free snacks to keep you running all day long, generous holiday and paid time off, options for private medical, dental, and vison plans, and support in saving for the future. Other perks include mental wellness coaching and support and access to more than 13,000 online classes with LinkedIn Learning. Learn more about our great benefits and perks and search specific offerings in your region at: www.realchemistrybenefits.com.

At Real Chemistry, we believe we're at our best when we're connected. Our Real Hybrid and Regional Teams (Real HART) approach is designed to foster collaboration, learning, innovation, and meaningful relationships while providing flexibility where appropriate. Because our workforce spans multiple countries, regions, and client needs, work arrangements may vary by role and location. Some positions offer hybrid or remote flexibility, while others require regular in-office presence. For example, certain teams and regions, including some of our UK operations, have office-based requirements. Your recruiter will discuss the specific expectations for the role you're pursuing during the interview process and keep you informed throughout the hiring journey. For employees located within a one-hour commute of a Real Chemistry office, we require in-person attendance two days per week, either from a Real Chemistry office or when working onsite with clients. Employees in regions without a nearby office may work remotely and come together throughout the year for collaboration, culture-building, learning and team connection opportunities. While these guidelines reflect our current workplace model, we understand that everyone’s circumstances are unique. If you require additional flexibility, we welcome an open conversation with your recruiter and our HR team to discuss your needs and determine what may be possible.

Real Chemistry is an Equal Opportunity employer. We continually strive to build and sustain an inclusive and equitable work environment where our employees feel empowered to leverage all they bring from their personal lived experience and professional expertise, to make our team the best in the industry. We encourage motivated and qualified applicants to apply without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, ethnic or national origin, age, physical or mental disability, genetic information, marital information, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local employment discrimination laws where Real Chemistry operates. Should you require accommodations throughout the interview process please let your recruiter know.