Code and Theory is a digital-first creative and technology agency that builds products, platforms and experiences for global brands. We combine engineering, design, data and strategy to deliver transformative digital solutions at scale.
This role leads the architecture pillar of the Adobe practice. You will be the senior architectural authority across every Adobe engagement we run, and the person our architects look to for technical direction, career growth and advocacy. You will also be the technical face of Code and Theory everywhere including Adobe - in front of their field teams, in front of their clients, and in the rooms where solutions get shaped before anyone writes a line of code.
This is not a role for someone who has stopped architecting. It is a leadership role for a practicing architect who wants to build and lead a team of them.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
- Own architectural quality across every Adobe engagement in the practice - content, data, work management and everything that connects them
- Run architecture reviews that change outcomes rather than rubber-stamp them, and establish the cadence and standards that make them worth attending
- Set and maintain architecture standards, reference architectures, decision records and reusable patterns across the practice
- Act as the escalation point for the hardest design and integration problems, and step in personally when an engagement is architecturally off-track
- Build the accelerator and asset library that makes each engagement faster than the last - migration tooling, discovery frameworks, estimation models, solution blueprints
- Hire, grow and lead a distributed team of multi-solution architects spanning content, data and work management specialisms
- Own performance management and career development decisions for your team - genuinely own them, with the context to advocate properly for the work your team is doing
- Mentor architects across specializations other than your own, which means being credible enough to challenge a data architect on identity strategy and a content architect on Edge Delivery Services in the same week
- Establish how architects work across concurrent engagements without becoming spread too thin
- Build a culture where architects volunteer their boundaries, document their decisions, and are trusted to say no
- Lead technical solutioning on enterprise pursuits - architecture narrative, effort estimation, staffing shape, scope definition and the technical story in the room
- Partner with sales, client partners and Adobe alliance leads on deal strategy
- Translate business problems into scalable Adobe architectures, and translate technical complexity into value propositions executives can act on
- Build the estimation discipline that makes our commitments credible - and hold the practice to estimate-versus-actual accuracy
- Establish agentic engineering as how this team works, not as an experiment running alongside it
- Build agents, sub-agents and orchestrated workflows that accelerate discovery, solution documentation, estimation, code review and migration - and get architects using them
- Evaluate and adopt emerging AI capabilities across the Adobe stack and beyond, and set the guardrails that make AI output safe to put in front of a client
- Mentor architects on AI-native working, including the ones who are skeptical
WHAT YOU'LL NEED
- 20+ years in technology, including 5+ years leading architects or senior technical staff globally. (India, LATAM etc)
- Demonstrated ownership of performance reviews, career development and compensation decisions - not mentoring alone
- Experience in an agency, consultancy or systems integrator, carrying multiple concurrent clients
- Experience delivering across US, India and LATAM specifically
- Deep, hands-on architectural expertise in at least one of the following:
- Content and experience - AEM Sites and Assets, AEMaaCS, Edge Delivery Services, Forms, EDS
- Data and personalization - Adobe Experience Platform, Real-Time CDP, Customer Journey Analytics, Journey Optimizer, Analytics, Target
- Work management and content supply chain - Workfront, Workfront Fusion, GenStudio, Firefly Services
- Working architectural knowledge across all three areas of architectural expertise, sufficient to review a design, challenge a decision, and hold a client conversation
- Experience with enterprise integration architecture (CRM, commerce, search, identity and SSO, analytics, data platforms)
- Experience with modern architecture patterns (API-first, composable, headless versus hybrid, cloud-native, event-driven)
- Still close enough to the work to earn respect from architects and engineers, not as the primary implementer, but the ability to read the code, diagnose the problem and defend the decision
- Proven experience leading complex projects that include Data migration, customer journeys, CSC, legacy CMS to AEM, on-premise to AEMaaCS, and into Edge Delivery Services
- Hands-on daily use of AI engineering tools like Claude, Cursor, or equivalent
- Demonstrated experience building agents, sub-agents or orchestrated workflows, not only consuming AI tooling
- Track record of establishing AI-assisted practice across a team, including bringing skeptics along
- Judgment about where AI output needs a human in the loop, and the guardrails to enforce it
- Pre-sales ownership including estimation, staffing models, scope definition, pricing input and presenting in the room
- Executive stakeholder management, including the ability to hold a boardroom conversation and an architecture review in the same day
- An understanding of utilization, margin and why an inaccurate estimate is an architectural failure as much as a commercial one
- Experience with enterprise clients across US, EU and APAC
- Own the technical relationship with Adobe's field, product and partner organizations
- Represent us in Adobe's partner ecosystem: beta programs, Experience League, user groups, Summit, and the conversations that earn early access
- Bring Adobe's roadmap back into the practice, and our field learning back to Adobe
- Experience with commercial negotiations and contract development
- Experience leading distributed teams across time zones, with genuine working relationships in offshore delivery centers rather than nominal ones
- Comfort operating in a practice that is being built rather than one that is already running
- Willingness to travel for client engagements, Adobe events and time with delivery teams
ABOUT US
Born in 2001, Code and Theory is a digital-first creative agency that sits at the center of creativity and technology. We pride ourselves on not only solving consumer and business problems, but also helping to establish new capabilities for our clients. With a global client roster of Fortune 100s and start-ups alike, we crave the hardest problems to solve. We have teams distributed across North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. The Code and Theory global network of agencies is growing and includes Kettle, Instrument, Left Field Labs, Create Group, Current, and TrueLogic.
Striving never to be pigeonholed, we work across every major category: from tech to CPG, financial services to travel & hospitality, government and education to media and publishing. We value the collaboration with our client partners, including but not limited to Adidas, Amazon, Con Edison, Diageo, EY, J.P. Morgan Chase, Lenovo, Marriott, Mars, Microsoft, Thomson Reuters, and TikTok.
The Code and Theory network is comprised of nearly 2,000 people with 50% engineers and 50% creative talent. We’re always on the lookout for smart, driven, and forward-thinking people to join our team.
The compensation range for this role is $225,000 - $300,000 and spans multiple levels. We're open to hiring at the level that best matches the right candidate's experience. Actual compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, budget, and location.
Skills Required
- 20+ years of experience in technology
- 5+ years leading architects or senior technical staff globally
- Experience owning performance reviews, career development, and compensation decisions
- Experience in an agency, consultancy, or systems integrator managing multiple concurrent clients
- Experience delivering across the US, India, and LATAM
- Deep hands-on architecture expertise in at least one Adobe specialization: content and experience, data and personalization, or work management and content supply chain
- Working architectural knowledge across all three Adobe specialization areas
- Enterprise integration architecture experience, including CRM, commerce, search, identity, SSO, analytics, and data platforms
- Experience with API-first, composable, headless or hybrid, cloud-native, and event-driven architecture patterns
- Ability to read code, diagnose technical problems, and defend architectural decisions
- Experience leading complex data migration, customer journey, CSC, legacy CMS to AEM, on-premise to AEMaaCS, and Edge Delivery Services projects
- Daily hands-on use of AI engineering tools such as Claude, Cursor, or equivalent
- Experience building agents, sub-agents, or orchestrated workflows
- Experience establishing AI-assisted practices across a team
- Experience implementing human-in-the-loop AI guardrails
- Pre-sales ownership covering estimation, staffing models, scope definition, pricing input, and presentations
- Executive stakeholder management experience
- Understanding of utilization, margin, and estimate-versus-actual accuracy
- Experience with enterprise clients across the US, EU, and APAC
- Experience owning technical relationships with Adobe field, product, and partner organizations
- Experience representing an organization in Adobe partner ecosystem activities
- Experience with commercial negotiations and contract development
- Experience leading distributed teams across time zones and offshore delivery centers
- Willingness to travel for client engagements, Adobe events, and delivery-team visits
Code and Theory Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Code and Theory and has not been reviewed or approved by Code and Theory.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Time-off policies include an “unlimited”/flexible PTO approach with paid holidays/sick time and seasonal early-close Fridays, offering notable flexibility. These options provide additional downtime beyond standard accrual models.
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Healthcare Strength — Core medical, dental, and vision coverage is part of the standard package, with employer-verified health plan information cited as current. Life and disability insurance further reinforce foundational coverage.
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Retirement Support — A 401(k) with employer match is included in the package, supporting long-term savings. Candidates are encouraged to confirm the match formula during the offer stage.
Code and Theory Insights
What We Do
Code and Theory is a strategically driven, digital-first creative agency that lives at the intersection of creativity and technology. We solve consumer and business problems across the entire customer journey that flex to meet the ever-changing needs of consumer expectations. We put the user, their behaviors and needs, at the center of everything we do — from our proprietary research methodologies, to product development processes, to how we create brand, channel and messaging strategies. Our goal is simple: to solve our clients business problems. We bring big ideas to life by looking holistically at brand ecosystems where digital plays a prominent role in driving the consumer from first-touch through to conversion to relationship deepening over time. We identify gaps in the consumer journey and opportunities in culture that require products, services or communications to fill. We work across categories, ranging as far and wide as health care (Pfizer, Sanofi, Reach MD, Bioreference Laboratories) to financial services (JP Morgan Chase, Prudential, Morgan Stanley, First Data) to cpg (Mars, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson) to technology companies (Facebook, Xerox, Samsung, Comcast) to culture brands (adidas, H&M). And because our DNA is in publishing — we’ve embedded in over 135 newsrooms in the past decade — we bring unique expertise in understanding how content is created, distributed and optimized, including our work with CNN, NBC News, NBC Sports, and Bustle Digital Group. At Code and Theory, we strive to only be limited by our own ambition and creativity. We believe in pushing our creativity beyond the easy and obvious answers in order to deliver the solutions that are right for our clients, their businesses, and their consumers.
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