Director of Product Management

Who We Are

The Farmer's Dog is the fastest growing pet health service company in the US, and was born from a mission to change the landscape of pet health, providing dogs and their humans with honest, smart, and simple care – a fresh proposition in an industry riddled with manipulative and misleading marketing. We're starting by radically improving the $100 billion pet food market, replacing bulk bags of highly-processed pellets with a personalized subscription service that sends healthy, freshly-made dog food, balanced by top veterinary nutritionists, directly to customers' doors. Our ultimate goal is to create innovative, honest, and delightful experiences across all aspects of pet care, and we believe our direct-to-consumer business model, holistic approach to growth, and dynamic and forward-thinking culture uniquely position us to shepherd this backwards industry into the future.

To date, The Farmer's Dog has delivered hundreds of millions of meals nationwide and raised over $150M in funding to help us build a company as healthy as the dogs who are eating those meals. Join us as we continue to develop ways of bringing peace of mind to our customers, health to their companions, and much-needed change to the way people feed and care for their pets.

#LongLiveDogs

A tech note: technology has been and will continue to be at the core of how we are going to build the future above. We think that a small, resource-constrained, but creative and free team can accomplish more than a large, bloated, unconstrained, bureaucratic one. We are accelerating our pace of innovation and are on the brink of substantial industry-changing new disruptions that will continue to improve the lives of millions of pets, pet owners, and pet care professionals.

A financial note: we are not waiting for a magical moment in the future to be sustainable. We are fiscally prudent, and we have never bitten more than we could chew. We have raised over $150MM where others have deployed more than a billion to reach a similar size.

What Do We Stand For

Our best ideas and competitive advantages come from direct engagement and understanding of our customers.

We are opinionated in how we develop software and start from the customer. We talk to customers, sit in customer interviews, shadow customer service agents, and use our own product ourselves. We believe that nothing good comes out of building software without having first built customer empathy. We spend a significant time doing so, and we make sure everybody does the same.

We also believe that one should know their business. What customer behaviors and problems result in the metrics we see every day? How can we connect what our data tells us to what our customer understanding tells us? What if anecdotes and data disagree?

We also don't think of ourselves solely as "Engineers", or "Product Managers" or "Designers". Sure, we all have different skill sets, but we are all one team that identifies and addresses customer problems TOGETHER. We continuously improve the "how" we develop software, by comparing us to our previous versions of ourselves. Are we getting better every time?

We don't subscribe to arbitrary development metrics or artifacts that are elsewhere defined as "best practices". Similarly, we don't subscribe to rigid expectations of roles. Our engineers can write requirements, our engineers can talk to our customers, our PMs can help with an engineering architecture proposal and so on. we don't expect requirements to be right at the first pass and we work together to improve them. We work small.

We work in sequence and not in parallel. We have objectives and "queues" of problems that we believe that, if solved, will get us to our objectives. We finish one job, then we go to the next. We are flexible in changing the ranking of the queues (some people call them "priorities") when new learnings and information come about. We rarely have timelines/deadlines, and guess what, we go faster than when we did.

We don't take pride in headcount. Small teams are the ones that can drive real change and value. Constraints breed creativity. Careers at TFD are about value creation, not empire building. Accordingly, your comp will be tied to that.

Why is all of the above important: It means developing a firm strategic direction with conviction while maintaining extreme tactical flexibility. That's why the ideal candidate may have worked in BigTech (can communicate well, earn trust, develop sound strategies), but has also worked in earlier stage startups (faster pace, adaptable systems, no "playbook", no politics) and has gleaned a balanced version of the two.

How You'll Make An Impact

This role will lead our PM team that develops products that most directly impact our external customers (pet owners, veterinary health professionals). It is a people manager role leading 3 amazing PMs inserted in 3 highly-productive pods.

• Be our most vocal and empathetic customer advocate.
• Build amazing digital (and physical) experiences for our customers, throughout their entire lifecycle.
• Be responsible for culture, process and coaching PMs and the pods in ways that align with our values and their careers.
• Drive our experimentation practices one experiment at a time. Balance quantity with quality. We have finite time to run experiments, so how can we maximize their impact?
• Partner with our stellar marketing teams, both in acquisition and retention, product design, and data strategy and insights to develop sound strategies.
• Foster and find ways to test new ideas and turn them into businesses.

We're Excited About You Because

• 10+ years of experience in product.
• 3+ years managing teams of 3 or more.
• You'll get deep with our customers and metrics. Basically no action until that is engrained. The first weeks and months will be entirely open-ended to learn about customers, systems, and people.
• You place emphasis on holistic thinking and when decisions are made you are able to consider the overarching impact of the business.
• You have a proven experience in building excellent and performant user interfaces, including conversion funnels. Bonus if worked in subscription businesses.
• You have a rock solid understanding of data including being able to get your own data.
• You've developed the trust of engineers and designers.
• You have an emphasis on quantitative data and are willing to experience the product firsthand.
• You've created a long term strategic vision in partnership with leaders and your team.
• You are an advocate for customers and can vocally and convincingly advocate for your perspective.
• You lead beyond your lane. You don't lead - just - "PMs" you lead all of us to solving important customer problems by helping the team invent on behalf of our customers.
• You should challenge the status quo, but have the humility to first dive deep into why the status quo is the status quo.
• You can ask uncomfortable questions and challenge long standing practices. Chances are there was no grand plan behind them.
• You deliver both joy and improvement feedback in the moment and appropriately to your reports, team members and superiors. We value open communication even when it's tough. We remind ourselves to deliver joy when we can (humans tend to only give feedback when it's bad, we don't at TFD).
• You come forward with bad news immediately even when it's embarrassing.
• You seek feedback and never take it personally.
• You know how to do your reports' job well, so no task is beneath you if needed.

Office guidelines

The office is open and available for all Monday through Friday. We ask all team members to be in office a minimum of 2-3 days a week to build a collaborative and invested environment to foster our unique in-person culture we are proud to have. This office policy is subject to change at company discretion.

Our DEI Philosophy:

Our company's mission is rooted in deep, genuine care for dogs – and for the people who love them. As an organization we are full of individuals who are unique in many ways, but all united in a mission of providing true peace of mind to dog lovers everywhere. Fixing this industry and improving the lives of pets and their people will be a difficult, decades-long endeavor. We believe the best use of our time, energy, and resources as a collective team is to focus on this mission, and on supporting our team to do their best work and be their best selves. In support of this we're committed to hiring and supporting a diverse workforce, and investing in internal structures, opportunities, hiring/promotions processes, and training that create and sustain an inclusive team. We strive to provide an experience at TFD that will be invested, meaningful and memorable as we progress on the journey to reimagine how we feed and care for our pets.

A Few of Our Best Benefits

• Dog-friendly office in Greenwich Village
• Market-competitive compensation and equity packages
• Comprehensive Healthcare, Dental, and Vision
• Company sponsored mental health benefit and coaching through Modern Health
• 12 week paid parental leave
• Competitive 401k plan with company match
• Flexible PTO
• Discounted fresh food for your pup
• Your pet interrupting video calls (and in-person meetings) is now a feature, not a bug

We commit to building a competitive compensation package and company environment for all individuals to thrive. We believe in competitive base compensation rooted in location specific market data and performance along with equity ownership in the company that allows every team member to build their personal wealth as the company grows, just as much as we believe in fostering a culture that supports our team members personally, professionally, and holistically. For this role the anticipated hiring base compensation range is $200,000 - $210,000 USD Annual and the compensation offered will include a robust market competitive package of base and equity. In addition to your base compensation offer you will also receive equity ownership in the company. More information about the value of this equity will be shared at the time of offer. This range is representative of NYC Market Data if you are applying to this role outside of the NYC area the range may change.

#LI-DM1 #LI-Hybrid