Field CTO - Media & Entertainment

Lavendo • San Francisco, CA

2d • $295,000 - $365,000 • Remote

About The Position

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.

Requirements

• 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

Responsibilities

• 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")

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

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive
• Education Level: No Education Listed