Permissions Issue creating folder on remote host with Jenkins

I'm having an issue with using Jenkins to create a folder on a remote host. The remote host in this case is a stock Ubuntu 20.04 AMI EC2 server with the default ubuntu user. I am connecting with the ubuntu user to the remote server with the code below:

sshagent(credentials : [branchConfig.SSH_CREDENTIALS_NAME]) {
    sh 'ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no ' + branchConfig.SSH_USER + '@' + branchConfig.DOCKER_HOST + ' "echo \"running whoami\" && whoami && echo \"running groups\" && groups && install --directory --mode 0755 --owner ' + branchConfig.SSH_USER + ' --group ' + branchConfig.SSH_USER + ' ~/importengine"'
}

This outputs the following error: + ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no ubuntu@x.x.x.x echo running whoami && whoami && echo running groups && groups && install --directory --mode 0755 --owner ubuntu --group ubuntu ~/importengine Warning: Permanently added 'x.x.x.x' (ECDSA) to the list of known hosts. running whoami ubuntu running groups ubuntu docker install: cannot change owner and permissions of ���/home/ubuntu/importengine���: Operation not permitted I can see that the folder gets created, but it has the following permissons:

drwxr-xr-x 2 root   root   4.0K Oct 13 11:12 importengine

If I delete the folder and run the following command (when logged in as ubuntu):

install --directory --mode 0755 --owner ubuntu --group ubuntu ~/importengine

...then the folder gets created with the following permissions:

drwxr-xr-x 2 ubuntu ubuntu 4.0K Oct 13 11:24 importengine

### Question **Why is the folder getting created as owned by root in the first place?** After all, I can clearly see that whoami outputs as ubuntu, and not root in the error output so it should be creating the folder as if the ubuntu user.