Lavendo
Location
San Francisco, CA, US
Salary
$295000 - $365000
Posted
Recently
Job Type
Full Time
Required Skills
About the Role
Our client is a fast-growing, publicly traded AI cloud infrastructure company with a global footprint spanning R&D hubs across Europe, North America, and Israel. Built by a world-class team of engineers and AI researchers with deep expertise in hardware, software, and ML systems, they are building the foundational infrastructure that powers the next generation of AI-driven businesses worldwide.
Their platform enables companies of all sizes — from Fortune 500 enterprises to cutting-edge AI startups and research institutions — to tackle real-world AI challenges without the burden of massive infrastructure investments or the need to build large in-house AI/ML teams.
To democratize access to world-class AI infrastructure, empowering organizations of all sizes to turn bold AI ambitions into reality. At the core of their success is a culture that celebrates creativity, embraces challenges, and thrives on collaboration.
As Field CTO for Media & Entertainment, you will serve as the de facto Head of Engineering for the M&E vertical — sitting alongside CTOs and CIOs at Agency Holding Companies, Gaming Studios, and leading Generative AI model companies to help them become AI-Native Tech Platforms. You will be the strategic technical owner of this vertical, bridging the physics of cutting-edge AI infrastructure with the real-world business goals of the most innovative companies in media and entertainment.
This is not a Sales Engineering, Professional Services, or evangelism role. You are accountable for defining the technical posture of the M&E vertical and driving product direction and revenue impact through real, scalable engineering outcomes.
Travel expectations: 10–20% for executive meetings and key industry events.
Executive Technical Partnership
Own the end-to-end technical strategy for lighthouse deals — including Agency Global Hold Co data consolidation projects and AAA Studio infrastructure migrations — engineered to survive real-world scale, not just pass a POC
Fluently translate infrastructure decisions (e.g., data lake locality, storage tiering) into direct business impact for executive stakeholders, connecting the physics of the stack to the P&L
Forensic Requirement Gathering
Go beyond the stated problem to uncover the technical truth — translating vague business goals (e.g., "We need lower ad costs") into precise engineering requirements (e.g., "Optimize inference batch size on L40s to reduce cost-per-token by 30%")
Identify exactly where each customer sits on the curve from Service Bureau to Tech Platform, and prescribe the specific infrastructure intervention needed to move them forward
Ecosystem & ISV Strategy
Identify, court, and technically validate relationships with the most critical ISVs in the media landscape
Define reference architectures for how key tools run optimally on the platform — not just "support" them, but set the standard
Internal Influence
Chair a quarterly M&E Product Summit with Core Engineering leadership, using forensic field evidence to prioritize and justify the vertical roadmap
Drive alignment between field learnings and internal product and engineering priorities
Team Leadership
Direct engineering teammates to build the right things at the right time, including high-leverage assets such as scalable quick-start reference architectures (e.g., "Deploying Llama-405B for Ad Copy Creation")
10+ years of experience in cloud infrastructure, platform engineering, or distributed systems
Executive presence — able to command a room of engineers and present a layered technical roadmap to a C-Suite
Product-minded leadership — experience defining platform strategy, not just executing tickets; comfortable telling a customer "no" and proposing a better alternative
Deep, production-grade expertise in GPU architectures (H100 vs. L40s), Kubernetes orchestration, high-performance parallel file systems (e.g., Lustre, WEKA), and networking constraints (InfiniBand/Ethernet)
Inference optimization expertise — deep understanding of model serving nuances including batch sizes, quantization, KV caching, and latency tradeoffs for both massive throughput and real-time (sub-50ms) demands
Industry fluency in at least two of the following M&E sub-sectors: Gaming, Multimodal Generative Models, AdTech, or VFX
Ability to distinguish between customers who need raw bare-metal access and those who need managed endpoints — and the wisdom to prescribe the right path
You thrive in environments where requirements are evolving — you don't wait for a roadmap, you build it
You view constraints as puzzles to solve, not reasons to stop
You are not satisfied with surface-level answers — you dig into the kernel, the logs, and the P&L to find the truth
You lead with credibility and earn trust with both engineers and executives equally
You bring entrepreneurial grit and a strong sense of ownership to everything you do
Compensation & Benefits:
Competitive compensation: $295,000 – $365,000 OTE + equity, based on experience, skills, and location
100% company-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees and families
401(k) with up to 4% company match and immediate vesting
20 weeks paid parental leave for primary caregivers; 12 weeks for secondary caregivers
Remote work reimbursement up to $85/month for mobile and internet
Company-paid short-term, long-term disability, and life insurance
Flexible remote work environment
Why This Role:
Define the technical strategy for one of the most dynamic and fast-evolving verticals in AI infrastructure
Work at the frontier of Generative AI, gaming, AdTech, and VFX with some of the most innovative companies in the world
Operate with genuine influence over product direction, platform strategy, and ecosystem development
Join a team that values technical depth, speed of execution, and real ownership
We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity, or expression, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state or local law.
Benefits
