Job Description

HAPPY HOWL®

Director of Technology

Remote (US) · Full-Time

About Happy Howl

We started Happy Howl because we believe dogs deserve better — and better wasn't available. Not from the legacy brands cutting corners with feed-grade ingredients, not from the fresh players who can't survive a pantry shelf, and not from anyone willing to accept that the industry standard for pet nutrition is "good enough."

We're on a mission to help dogs live longer, healthier lives. Every recipe is 100% human-grade, single-source animal protein, zero preservatives, backed by real science and formulated by a PhD nutritionist who obsesses over every ingredient. Our food is shelf-stable for two years without refrigeration — real, whole-food nutrition that's ready whenever and wherever your dog is. That combination doesn't exist anywhere else.

But we're more than a product. We work hand-in-hand with rescue organizations across the country because we believe every dog deserves a great meal — not just the ones who already found their forever home. Giving back isn't a marketing campaign for us. It's why we exist.

We're backed by some of the most respected investors in consumer and pet, and we're building the team that scales this brand past $100M in annual revenue. This is not a slow build. We move fast, we think big, and we hold ourselves to a standard most companies talk about but never actually live.

The people here are energetic, passionate, thoughtful, and intentional. We're a team in every sense of the word — we win together, we solve hard problems together, we care for one another and we're building something that genuinely matters. If you want to do the best work of your career at a company that refuses to settle, Happy Howl is where you belong.

About the Role

This is a unique role at the intersection of technology leadership and AI-first operations. You'll be building an AI-powered force multiplier that makes every department at Happy Howl dramatically more effective. You'll own the entire technical infrastructure while deploying AI systems that automate, accelerate, and improve everything from product to marketing to fulfillment to finance.

How We Think About This Role

Happy Howl doesn't have a traditional engineering org, and we're not building one. We're building something different — an AI-first technology function where one exceptional technical leader and a small team of AI implementation engineers become the force multiplier for the entire company.

Today, we use Claude extensively at the executive level for strategic analysis, financial modeling, content development, and operational decision-making. But what we don't have is someone who takes that same philosophy and deploys it as working infrastructure across every department — automations that run without anyone thinking about them, tools that make a 25-person team operate like a 60-person team, and a data layer that gives every leader real-time visibility into what matters.

That's what this role builds.

You won't be managing a 10-person engineering team or sitting in sprint planning meetings. You'll be the technical architect of a company that bets heavily on AI as an organizational advantage — and you'll work directly with the CEO, CFO, CGO, and every department head to identify the highest-leverage problems and ship solutions fast.

What You'll Do

AI & Automation

Deploy AI-powered systems across every function of the business. Customer service: intelligent ticket routing, automated response drafting, cancellation intervention workflows. Marketing: automated ad performance reporting, creative asset tagging, campaign analytics pipelines. Operations: inventory burn rate alerts, fulfillment SLA monitoring, co-manufacturer production tracking dashboards. Finance: automated board reporting data pulls, cohort analysis refreshes, cash flow forecasting models. You'll find the manual process, understand the business logic behind it, and replace it with something that runs itself.

Technical Infrastructure

Own the full technology stack — Shopify storefront, subscriptions, Klaviyo email/SMS, data pipelines, analytics, and every integration that connects them. You're the single accountable owner for site uptime, page speed, checkout conversion, and data integrity. You own the technology infrastructure and ongoing performance.

Cross-Functional Systems Building

Sit in on leadership meetings across departments — not as a passive observer, but as the person who hears a strategic priority and immediately starts thinking about how to systematize it. When the Head of Retention says subscription cancellations spike at day 45, you build the intervention trigger. When the CFO needs LTV/CAC by customer type updated weekly instead of monthly, you build the pipeline. When the CGO wants to test 50 ad variations instead of 10, you build the workflow that makes it possible.

Long-Term Team Building

Once proven out, hire and lead 1–2 AI Implementation Engineers who report to you and serve every department through a dotted-line service model. You set the standards, define the toolchain, and build the playbook for how AI gets deployed at Happy Howl. Every automation gets documented, every system gets a runbook, and the AI layer becomes institutional knowledge — not tribal knowledge.

Emerging Technology

Stay on the absolute forefront of AI development. New model releases, new tool capabilities, new paradigms for how AI agents interact with business systems — you're the person who evaluates them the week they ship and has a recommendation on our Slack by Friday. We don't want someone who's aware of what's happening in AI. We want someone who's obsessed with it the way we're obsessed with dog nutrition.

What We're Looking For

You've been building software for 5+ years, but the last 2–3 have fundamentally changed how you work. You live inside AI tools and use them to ship real systems, not prototypes. Technical skill is the entry ticket. What actually matters to us:

You own outcomes, not activity. You measure yourself by what shipped and what it did for the business. You move with urgency and judgment — we require both. When something breaks, you say so fast and bring a recommendation with it. You embrace the underdog spirit. We're not Google. You see a 25-person team as a feature, not a limitation, because you know one exceptional builder with the right tools can outship an entire department at a company ten times our size. You've lived that, not just believed it. You elevate everyone around you. You solve problems with people, not around them. You document everything. You reject "good enough" when it threatens quality. You deliver work you're proud to put your name on, especially when no one is watching. You are locked in, not clocked in. We don't track hours. We track ownership, urgency, quality, and follow-through. You rise to the moment when it matters because you understand what's at stake. And you genuinely believe AI changes everything — not in the thought-leadership-post sense, but in the "I rebuilt how my last company operated and I want to do it again" sense.

Nice to Have

Experience in DTC, CPG, or subscription businesses. Familiarity with Shopify, Klaviyo, Stay.ai, Google Analytics, and Meta/TikTok ad platforms. Prior experience building AI-powered automations for customer service, marketing, or operations workflows. Data engineering background — ETL pipelines, warehousing, BI tools. Experience evaluating and deploying AI agents or multi-step AI workflows in production environments.

What We Offer

Competitive base salary ($160K–$180K) plus a meaningful annual bonus opportunity and equity in a company scaling toward $100M+ in revenue. You'll be the first technical leadership hire — this isn't joining a team, it's building the function. You report directly to the CEO with full autonomy over technical decisions, toolchain, and hiring. Remote-friendly with the flexibility to work from anywhere in the US. And the chance to build an AI-first organization from the ground up at a company where the leadership team already believes in what you're building, not one where you have to convince them first.

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