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Field CTO - Media & Entertainment

Lavendo

New York, NY

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JOB DETAILS
SALARY
$295,000–$365,000 Per Year
SKILLS
Adtech, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Artificial Intelligence (AI) Games, Caching, Cloud Computing, Compensation and Benefits, Cost Control, Data Lake, Dental Insurance, Disability Insurance, Distributed Computing, Ecosystems, Entertainment and Media, Entrepreneurship, Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO), Establish Priorities, Ethernet, Evangelism, File Systems, Fortune 500 Customers, GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), Gaming, Genetics, Hubs, Independent Software Vendor (ISV), Kernel Programming, Leadership, Life Insurance, Physics, Product Engineering, Professional Services, Profit & Loss, Public Cloud, Reimbursement, Research & Development (R&D), Sales/Support Engineering (SE), Software Engineering, Startup, State Laws and Regulations, Technical Presentation, Technical Strategy, Vision Plan, Work From Home
LOCATION
New York, NY
POSTED
6 days ago
About the Company

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.

The Mission

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.

The Opportunity

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.

What You'll Do

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")
What You Bring
  • 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
Key Success Drivers
  • 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
Why Join?

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.

About the Company

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Lavendo

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