Senior Manager, Contract Manufacturing

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

As a Senior Manager, Contract Manufacturing at The Farmer’s Dog, you’ll own the relationship with multiple manufacturing partners and serve as the intermediary between them and internal TFD stakeholders. While serving as their day-to-day point person, you’ll also gain a deep understanding of their processes and needs. You’ll use that information to drive improvement at the co-mans, work on long-term capital projects, and inform conversations on strategic capacity planning. This role reports directly to the VP, Contract Manufacturing.

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

External Relationship Management: Serve as the primary point of contact for manufacturing partners, from day-to-day contact to weekly calls and quarterly business reviews (QBRs). Establish and report critical metrics — including RFT, OTIF, cost per lb, yield, and complaint rates — to ensure data drives all decisions and partner accountability.

Internal Relationship Management: Act as the liaison for the manufacturing partner within TFD, explaining capabilities and the reasoning behind decision making and prioritization. Collaborate cross-functionally with P&P, FSQR, R&D, and other groups to ensure all stakeholders have the information needed to be successful.

Performance Improvement: Drive projects that improve throughput, performance, and product quality while simultaneously decreasing product cost. Lead root cause analysis and corrective actions for service or quality failures, and proactively identify and mitigate operational risks.

Contracts and Capital: Work with legal and leadership to establish contract terms, advise on strategy, and review potential capital investments.

Product Commercialization: Support projects from ideation through execution utilizing TFD’s commercialization, qualification, and verification tenets. Collaborate with manufacturing partners, FSQR, R&D, and Commercialization to ensure all parties are aligned and prepared for launches.

Capacity Management: Partner closely with planning to review capacity needs and commitments both short- and long-term. Influence decisions on where and how much to run with each partner based on a deep understanding of capabilities and metrics.

We're Excited About You Because

You have 3–5 years of experience in the food or beverage manufacturing industry.

You are skilled in plant operations management, engineering, supply chain, distribution, consulting, and/or procurement.

You have experience in MS Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Access) and Google Workspace (Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms).

You possess outstanding project management and problem-solving skills, with the ability to think creatively and drive results.

You are comfortable collaborating with cross-functional teams including Supply Chain, Finance, Accounting, Planning, Procurement, and FSQR.

You thrive in fast-paced settings and bring an assertive, proactive approach to your work.

You have a desire to approach work as a continuous learning opportunity.

You have experience with negotiation and contract manufacturing development (preferred).

You are comfortable with up to 50% work-related travel.

You are based in NYC or open to relocating to NYC.

You are able to thrive in a fast-paced and ambiguous environment, naturally curious and proactive self-starter, constantly on the lookout for new opportunities and solutions

You’re an owner, have excellent problem-solving skills and can prioritize tasks effectively, with a strong attention to detail

You are detail-oriented and proactive, you thrive as a self-starter and excel in managing multiple projects simultaneously

You're a skilled communicator and have the ability to absorb and distill complexity into simple terms to drive decision making.

You love dogs.

Office Guidelines

We are an in-office culture, made of in-office people who thrive on the collaboration and magnetism of working in a shared space. We are seeking individuals who excel in this type of environment, where being present fosters deeper connections and engagement. We ask all team members to be in office 4 - 5 days a week to build a collaborative and invested environment to foster our unique in-person culture we are proud to have. This office policy is subject to change at company discretion.

Our Belonging Philosophy:

At TFD, we believe Belonging is a shared commitment to creating a workplace where every person feels respected, valued, and empowered to be themselves. When people feel a true sense of belonging, they do their best work, take smart risks, and bring forward diverse perspec