Senior Director of Technology, Embark

• 8-10+ years of progressive engineering leadership experience
• Experience leading senior engineering leaders across multiple teams
• Experience owning engineering strategy and execution for consumer-facing digital products
• Deep understanding of modern software architecture, cloud infrastructure, platform engineering, and software development lifecycle practices
• Experience driving cross-functional initiatives spanning product, engineering, data, and business teams
• Strong understanding of data platforms, analytics ecosystems, and AI/ML applications
• Experience establishing engineering operating models, organizational design, and scalable development processes

Desirable

• Embark is entering its next phase of growth, evolving from a company that delivers industry-leading canine DNA insights into a personalized insights-powered platform that helps pet owners better understand and care for their dogs throughout their lives
• To support this evolution, we are bringing Product and Technology together under a unified Product organization, reporting to our Chief Product Officer, and are seeking a Senior Director of Technology to lead our engineering team through this next chapter
• This leader will be responsible for building a high-performing engineering organization that can scale product innovation, accelerate delivery, leverage AI as a force multiplier, and create seamless collaboration across product, engineering, data, and customer-facing teams
• The opportunity extends beyond traditional engineering leadership. We are looking for a technology leader who can help define how AI transforms the way we build products, make decisions, and operate as a company
• This leader will also help shape and scale Embark’s uniquely complex engineering and data environment built on 3M+ genomes, longitudinal pet health data, scientific computing, and a proprietary data moat
• The role inherits both the opportunity and challenge of unlocking this asset into a unified, AI-enabled intelligence platform that powers personalization, discovery, and next-generation product experiences for millions of pet parents
• Building an AI-enabled engineering organization
• Defining a modern data and platform strategy
• Scaling engineering effectiveness and execution
• Strengthening technical architecture and product quality
• Creating tighter alignment across product, engineering, science, data, and customer experience
• Developing future engineering leaders and organizational capability
• This role is ideal for a leader who is energized by transformation, thrives in high-growth environments, and wants to help shape how a category-defining company leverages technology and AI to create meaningful customer impact
• Engineering Leadership & Organizational Effectiveness
• Lead and develop a multidisciplinary engineering organization across software engineering, platform engineering, data engineering, and scientific/genomic science pipelines
• Build a high-accountability, high-performance culture grounded in ownership, execution excellence, continuous learning, and customer impact
• Recruit, coach, and develop engineering leaders and high-potential talent
• Establish clear operating mechanisms, engineering standards, and scalable ways of working across teams
• Drive organizational health, engagement, and retention within the technology organization
• Technology Strategy & Architecture
• Define and execute the company's technology strategy in partnership with the Chief Product Officer
• Ensure architecture decisions support scalability, reliability, security, and long-term business objectives
• Balance technical debt reduction with product innovation and business priorities
• Establish engineering roadmaps that align with company strategy and product goals
• AI, Data & Intelligent Systems
• Lead Embark’s engineering strategy for AI-enabled product development, internal workflows, and software development practices
• Partner with Product, Science, and Data teams to identify opportunities where AI and machine learning can create differentiated customer experiences and operational efficiencies
• Drive adoption of AI-assisted development tools and modern engineering workflows
• Establish frameworks for responsible AI implementation, experimentation, governance, and measurement
• Build and execute a cohesive data platform strategy that improves accessibility, reliability, and utilization of data across the organization
• Product & Engineering Partnership
• Serve as a strategic partner to Product leadership in translating vision into scalable technical execution
• Create strong alignment across squads to ensure customer experiences feel integrated rather than fragmented
• Improve planning, prioritization, estimation, and execution practices across teams
• Drive clarity around technical tradeoffs, dependencies, and resource allocation
• Foster a culture where product, design, data, and engineering operate as a unified team
• Delivery Excellence
• Improve engineering velocity, predictability, quality, and operational performance
• Define and track key engineering metrics, including delivery effectiveness, reliability, quality, and developer productivity
• Establish best practices around testing, observability, release management, and incident response
• Ensure teams consistently deliver high-quality customer experiences while maintaining platform stability
• Leadership
• Serve as a key member of the Product & Technology leadership
• Contribute to broader company strategy, planning, and organizational decision-making
• Communicate technology strategy and progress effectively to cross-functional stakeholders
• Help shape Embark's long-term vision for how technology and AI create competitive advantage