Director of Engineering, New Products

About this role:

The Director of Engineering, New Products is a senior technical leadership role that owns the system design vision for a new business line. This person sets the architecture, translates business requirements into sound technical decisions, and pulls the pieces and teams together around one direction. They provide technical leadership to a contractor team of three from day one, with potential for 1-2 additional small teams over time, and work closely with Product, Engineering, Operations, and business leaders. The role is hands-on and scales through process, automation, and AI-assisted development rather than headcount. It is internally facing and does not include external, commercial, or partner-facing work.

This role requires balancing strategic thinking with pragmatic execution — helping teams solve complex challenges while maintaining a strong focus on quality, performance, on-time delivery, and long-term maintainability. The ideal candidate is equally comfortable operating at a systems architecture level and rolling up their sleeves to move a critical initiative forward. They bring a builder's mindset, a bias toward action, and the interpersonal skills to work effectively across internal teams and stakeholders alike. They use AI coding agents such as Claude Code every day and look to scale through the process before adding people.

Apply if you’re excited to: :

• Launch new platform capabilities from scratch, from design through production on committed timelines
• Design and evolve integrations with dozens of third-party systems, including pharmaceutical manufacturers and clinic systems, with reliability and observability built in
• Architect the data pipelines, APIs, and services that move data between veterinary clinics, pet owners, drug manufacturers, and industry partners
• Oversee end-to-end technical execution of key initiatives, managing timelines, dependencies, and cross-team coordination
• Run architecture reviews and hands-on guidance sessions for complex initiatives spanning multiple teams and systems
• Identify and mitigate technical risks in third-party integrations, data quality, scalability, and performance before they reach customers or partners
• Contribute to product roadmap planning and prioritization
• Evaluate emerging technologies in integrations, data platforms, APIs, and distributed systems to inform the technical roadmap

About You::

• 10+ years of software engineering, including 3+ years at a Staff or Principal level or equivalent technical leadership
• Built or launched a new platform from scratch
• Designed and delivered APIs, integrations, or event-driven systems at scale, not just maintained them, ideally in healthcare, veterinary tech, fintech, or SaaS
• Led or technically directed other engineers, formally or as tech lead, and aligned multiple teams without formal authority
• Daily hands-on use of AI coding agents such as Claude Code, with the ability to explain how they change the way you design, build, and review
• Strong architecture skills: event-driven design, data modeling, proofs of concept, and pragmatic tradeoffs between short-term needs and long-term scalability
• Turns business requirements into a clear system design and delivery plan

PetDesk combines the industry's most user-friendly client engagement tools with the highest-rated pet parent app to simplify your veterinary clinic’s operations while strengthening client relationships.

Our recruiting process is rooted in “Who: The A Method of Hiring”. This standardized interview process allows candidates to answer the same questions, experience the same process, and ensure a fair performance review from multiple perspectives.

Please, no external recruiters—candidate profiles submitted from external recruiting agencies will not be considered.