Senior Director, Technology

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.

The successful candidate will inherit a talented team and play a pivotal role in:

• 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.  

Role & Responsibilities

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.

Candidate Qualifications

Required

• 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.

Preferred

• Experience in high-growth technology companies such as consumer subscription, SaaS, marketplace, health technology, or direct-to-consumer businesses.
• Experience building products that leverage personalization, recommendation systems, machine learning, or generative AI capabilities.
• Experience leading platform modernization or large-scale technical transformations.

Working @ Embark
At Embark, we might be dog lovers, but we’re passionate about people too. We’re committed to building an inclusive culture where all employees can thrive. Here are some of our benefits and perks:

• Flexible vacation policy – take the time you need, when you need it.
• Paid parental leave – plus paw-ternity leave for new pet parents!
• Every other Friday off in the summer – enjoy those long weekends.
• Subsidized pet insurance – because our pets are family.
• Big-company benefits with a startup feel – including a 401k match, semi-annual bonus, commuter benefits, and premium healthcare.
• Competitive salaries and stock options – be an owner in what we’re building.
• New MacBook Pros or Windows devices – the tools you need to succeed.
• Continuing education support – conferences, learning resources, and career growth opportunities.

Salary: $212k - $250k depending on experience and qualifications

Embark is an equal opportunity workplace and values diversity at our company. We are committed to equal employment opportunities regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, citizenship status, sexual orientation, age, disability status, marital status, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or any other characteristics protected by federal, state or local laws. See also EEO is the Law.
 

Recruitment Notice: As part of our recruitment and hiring process, Embark may use technology, including AI-enabled tools, to assist with activities such as reviewing applications, evaluating qualifications, and supporting hiring decisions. These tools help inform our process but are not the sole basis for employment decisions. Human review and judgment remain an important part of all hiring decisions. Candidates who have questions about our use of AI in hiring or who require a reasonable accommodation may contact us at [email protected].