Principal Engineer - AI-Driven Cloud & DevOps Lead

Code and Theory; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Code and Theory in New York is seeking a Principal Engineer to lead architecture and technical direction while guiding a matrixed team of DevOps, infrastructure, and data engineers. This hands-on role shapes the engineering strategy and AI-powered production workflows across the organization.

You'll drive cloud architecture across AWS, GCP, or Azure, influence backend design, and advance data pipelines to keep systems scalable and reliable. Strong leadership is essential.

Qualifications

• Deep expertise in cloud architecture and multi-cloud patterns.
• Strong backend design and production systems experience.
• Broad data engineering knowledge across pipelines and storage.
• DevOps mindset focused on quality, efficiency and flow.
• Experience leading engineers in matrixed or cross-functional teams.

Responsibilities

• 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.

Skills

Cloud architecture

Backend development

Data engineering

DevOps

Leadership

Tools

AWS

GCP

Azure

Job description

Code and Theory in New York is seeking a Principal Engineer to lead architecture and technical direction while guiding a matrixed team of DevOps, infrastructure, and data engineers. This hands-on role shapes the engineering strategy and AI-powered production workflows across the organization.

You'll drive cloud architecture across AWS, GCP, or Azure, influence backend design, and advance data pipelines to keep systems scalable and reliable. Strong leadership is essential.