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Director, Packaging

Thefarmersdog

New York, New York, USonsite

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About this role

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

The Farmer's Dog is growing fast — and our packaging needs to keep pace. We're looking for a Director, Packaging Engineering to own the design, development, and commercialization of packaging across our product portfolio. This is a high-ownership role for a technically excellent engineer who is equally comfortable building strategy and rolling up their sleeves on the plant floor. You will be a key technical partner across Product Development, Design, Quality, Operations, and Supply Chain — driving packaging from concept through commercial launch with speed, rigor, and a clear point of view.

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

Packaging Strategy & Portfolio Leadership

• Set the strategic direction for packaging across TFD's full product portfolio — including current formats and new formats as the business expands into new categories and channels.

• Own the packaging roadmap: prioritize initiatives, align stakeholders, and ensure the team is focused on the highest-impact work at every stage of growth.

• Define and build scalable packaging engineering standards — qualification protocols, print approval processes, retained sample programs, shelf-life testing frameworks, and supplier quality requirements.

• Drive design recommendations backed by competitive benchmarking, consumer insight, and technical rigor; make the call when tradeoffs arise and align the organization on direction.

• Proactively identify and resolve risks across the packaging portfolio — materials performance, print quality, regulatory compliance, retailer requirements — before they reach production or market.

Commercialization & Supplier Management

• Lead packaging trials and validation runs at co-manufacturers and suppliers; own technical outcomes and ensure findings are clearly documented and communicated to leadership.

• Build and manage strong relationships with external packaging suppliers, print vendors, and contract manufacturers — driving accountability for quality, cost, and timeline.

• Partner with Operations and Supply Chain to align on production windows, material lead times, and inventory requirements across launches and ongoing production.

• Ensure all packaging meets food safety, regulatory, and retailer requirements for every format and channel we sell through.

Team Leadership & Organizational Development

• Build, lead, and develop a high-performing packaging engineering team — setting clear goals, providing direct and caring feedback, and creating a culture of technical excellence and ownership.

• Be opinionated on team structure, talent needs, and capability gaps as the portfolio grows; recruit to

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