Staff Software Engineer

Who We Are

The Farmer’s Dog was born from a mission to change the landscape of pet health, providing dogs and their humans with honest, smart, and simple care. We’re starting by radically improving the $90 billion pet food industry, replacing bags of highly-processed pellets with a personalized subscription service that sends complete and balanced, freshly-made dog food directly to customers’ doors. Our ultimate goal is to create innovative, delightful and personalized experiences across all aspects of pet care, and we believe our direct-to-consumer business model, holistic approach to growth, and dynamic culture uniquely position us to shepherd this backwards industry into the future.

To date, The Farmer’s Dog has delivered over 1 billion 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 customers, health to their companions, and much-needed change to the way people feed and care for their pets.

#LongLiveDogs

What We Stand For and Where You’ll Come In

At The Farmer’s Dog, we believe the best customer experience comes from owning the technology that powers it. That’s why we design, build, and operate our systems in-house, from subscription and e-commerce to fulfillment and delivery, so that every dog and human gets the best experience, every time.

Our engineers work on problems that matter and that are hard: evolving systems to support rapid growth, building platforms flexible enough to serve customers (Humans and their best furry friends) with many different needs, and creating product experiences that didn’t exist before.

You’ll support a group of talented Engineers and Managers across pods who care deeply about building reliable, scalable systems and about working well together. Here, you’ll have the space and agency to have a direct hand in scaling the business, solving novel customer problems, and building strong relationships with cross functional partners along the way.

If you want to make an outsized impact on technology, on customers, and on the lives of dogs everywhere - this is the right place for you.

One Team: We don’t think of ourselves as “Acquisition Marketers”, “Engineers”, “Data Analysts”, or “Product Managers”. Beyond denoting skill sets and areas of expertise, we don’t think departments matter. We’d rather align ourselves to the goals we’re working to achieve and make sure we have necessary subject matter expertise to drive meaningful impact. We strive to orient ourselves around customer problems TOGETHER – getting the right people, with the right context, in the right rooms/Zooms to solve problems holistically.

We are skeptical about everything and precious about nothing:  Ideas can and should come from anywhere, and we aren’t tied to our own. We proactively source input. We talk to our customers and leads regularly and are quick to change course if we know there’s a better or more impactful way to solve problems.

We consider the customer journey in all of our decisions:  We know that no interaction exists in a silo and therefore understand how important every single one is.  We ensure our strategy sets prospective and new customers up for success and drives long-term retention.  We answer questions and address problems early and proactively.  We understand the value of different channels, initiatives, and messages and know how to articulate impact and advocate for prioritization holistically.

We Execute For Impact: We don’t subscribe to “best practices” or “industry KPIs”. We’re uninterested in how we compare to “benchmarks”; instead we orient ourselves around being the best we can possibly be. Similarly, we don’t subscribe to rigid or classical expectations of roles – i.e. acquisition is hyper-focused on improving customer retention and experience.

We Are Focused and Work Without Assumption: We are not beholden to ideas. We have goals and believe everything beyond that is a series of hypotheses to validate. To that end, we seek to work in sequence and not in parallel. We constantly ask ourselves, “what’s the most important hypothesis I should be working on right now? How do I confirm or reject that hypothesis as fast as possible?”. We rarely have timelines/deadlines and are constantly taking in new information and adjusting our priorities accordingly. We don’t expect to be perfect the first time.

How You'll Make An Impact

• Guide the strategic evolution of core and new systems, establishing clear boundaries, leading migrations, and enabling resilient architecture that scales and adapts to business needs now and for the future
• Influence product and business strategy through deep understanding of our systems and products by identifying risks, constraints and opportunities
• Foster alignment across the organization by building trust between pods & business partners, refining priorities and ensuring the engineering strategy supports customer and company goals
• Partner closely with other Staff Engineers, Engineering Managers, Product Managers, Designs and Data to steer and shape the organization
• Assess and introduce new technologies thoughtfully, including AI and automation tools, through research, prototypes, written briefs and, most importantly, ensuring alignment with our strategy and standards
• Lead the org's technical approach to AI: evaluate where it creates genuine leverage, define how we use it responsibly, and raise the bar on how engineers at TFD apply it in their day-to-day work
• Work with departments across the organization to ensure a cohesive experience across all of our digital and physical products for our customers 
• Develop deep expertise in how data flows across our systems and domains, using that understanding to guide architectural boundaries and integration decisions
• Continuously raise the bar for engineering excellence by modeling high standards, mentoring & coaching engineers at all levels and driving best practices throughout the organization.

We're Excited About You Because

• You bring 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with deep and varied expertise designing and evolving systems at scale
• You’ve led architectural initiatives that reshaped systems and made them more reliable, maintainable, and extensible
• You’ve partnered closely with product on business strategy and have helped organizations balance and build short and long term strategy
• You are able to succeed in a fast-paced and ambiguous environment, naturally curious and proactive self-starter, constantly on the lookout for new opportunities and solutions
• You thrive at working across teams, aligning people and systems, and driving impact beyond your immediate scope
• You have a clear-eyed view of AI; you know where it accelerates great engineering and where it introduces risk, and you help teams navigate the differences
• You mentor and elevate other senior engineers
• You’re an owner, have excellent problem-solving skills and can prioritize tasks effectively, with a strong attention to detail
• You're a skilled communicator and have the ability to absorb and distill complexity into simple terms to drive decision making.
• You love dogs.

Office Guidelines

We are an in-office culture, made of in-office people who thrive on the collaboration and magnetism of working in a shared space. We are seeking individuals who excel in this type of environment, where being present fosters deeper connections and engagement. We ask all team members to be in office 4 - 5 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 Belonging Philosophy:

At TFD, we believe Belonging is a shared commitment to creating a workplace where every person feels respected, valued, and empowered to be themselves. When people feel a true sense of belonging, they do their best work, take smart risks, and bring forward diverse perspectives — leading to stronger decisions and deeper relationships.

We anchor this belief in a simple phrase: “Everyone’s welcome at the dog park.” No matter your background, identity, or role, there’s space for you here. There’s no one way to show up at the dog park— just shared space, mutual respect, and the freedom to be yourself. Being included is just the beginning, it’s about contributing your voice, growing through challenges, and building trust through shared goals. This philosophy guides how we lead, how we hire, how we communicate, and how we grow.
                    
We continuously evaluate to ensure we are creating a consistent experience that cultivates belonging for all employees, from hiring and performance reviews to talent development. We also believe Belonging happens in everyday moments of connection; lunch with a new teammate, a shared laugh, or a quick story about your weekend. Our structure includes biannual employee surveys, manager training, TFD camps, and support from Humans to ensure we’re listening and learning from our Team.

Together, these efforts reflect what Belonging means at TFD: a culture where everyone can thrive.

A Few of Our Best Benefits

• Dog-friendly office in SoHo
• Market-competitive compensation and equity packages
• Comprehensive Healthcare, Dental, and Vision
• Company supported mental health benefits
• 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

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

The Farmer's Dog, Inc. is an equal employment opportunity employer and does not discriminate in hiring on the basis of sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, creed, national origin, physical or mental disability, protected veteran status or any other legally protected characteristic or status. For more information, please visit Know Your Rights.

Reasonable Accommodations

TFD complies with applicable federal, state, and local disability laws and makes reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities.  If a reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please contact [email protected].

We're Here to Help

We’re happy to answer any questions you may have about the position or our hiring process - please reach out at [email protected].

NYC Pay Range 207000 - 250000 USD