Chief Technology Officer, CookUnity

$300-400k

+ Stock Options + Eligible for a bi-annual performance bonus

SQL
React
JavaScript
Python
Scala
Java
Ruby on Rails
Expert level
New York

1 day a week in office

CookUnity

Ready-meal delivery marketplace

Open for applications

CookUnity

Ready-meal delivery marketplace

201-500 employees

B2CMarketplaceSustainabilityFoodConsumer GoodsDelivery

Open for applications

$300-400k

+ Stock Options + Eligible for a bi-annual performance bonus

SQL
React
JavaScript
Python
Scala
Java
Ruby on Rails
Expert level
New York

1 day a week in office

201-500 employees

B2CMarketplaceSustainabilityFoodConsumer GoodsDelivery

Company mission

CookUnity is on a mission to unlock the world’s best food creators and bring their meals to the masses.

Role

Who you are

  • If you are passionate about guiding teams to reach their full potential and are ready to shape the future of CookUnity, we want to hear from you
  • 10+ years of software development and engineering leadership experience
  • Proven track record of scaling an engineering organization from 30 to 200+ people
  • Leadership experience at a startup with the poise needed to inspire composure in others during stressful times
  • Strong background in marketplaces or complex e-commerce fulfillment/operational businesses
  • Experience leading distributed global teams, particularly in Latin America
  • Demonstrated excellence in building strong relationships and effectively collaborating with cross-functional teams and stakeholders, ensuring seamless integration and alignment across the organization
  • A deep interest in and passion for CookUnity's mission to change the way we eat and how Chefs cook
  • Demonstrated ability to balance business priorities with technological advancement
  • History of successfully migrating legacy systems to modern architectures
  • Expertise in building and scaling microservices infrastructures
  • Share a passion for CookUnity's mission to transform the culinary landscape
  • If you are passionate about using cutting-edge technology to transform the food industry and have a proven history of scaling engineering teams and infrastructure, we want to connect with you

Desirable

  • Navigate the complexities of a rapidly growing startup environment
  • Make strategic decisions on when to prioritize business needs vs. technological advancements
  • Implement efficient processes for continuous integration and deployment
  • Foster a culture of innovation, quality, and data-driven decision-making
  • Communicate technical concepts effectively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
  • Commit to staying current with emerging technologies and industry trends

What the job involves

  • We are seeking a visionary and accomplished Chief Technology Officer to spearhead the transformation of CookUnity's engineering team and elevate our operational scale across the United States
  • As a pivotal senior leader, you will be the driving force behind our transition from a "very good" to a "world-class" engineering culture
  • Your role will encompass mentoring and empowering our current engineering leads, fostering a culture of excellence, and inspiring the team with your technical acumen and strategic insights
  • The role oversees our engineering team (including product engineers, platform engineers, mobile engineers, data engineers, and our devops team) as well as our Quality team and Data Science team
  • You'll report to our Founder/CEO, and, as a key leader in the company, you'll partner closely with the Leadership Team to deliver a breakthrough experience
  • We care deeply about helping our customers eat better and believe the key is a simple, habit-forming subscription with the widest variety of high-quality meals available
  • We have designed our whole strategy around this
  • To achieve our goals, our subscription platform must scale efficiently without becoming overly complex
  • Simultaneously, our personalization engine needs to understand our customers so well that they are confident they will love their meals every week As a company that primarily delivers β€œatoms” not just β€œbits”, we also need to master the operational intricacies of ingredient sourcing, production, and fulfillment logistics
  • Actively participate in the company-level quarterly planning process and lead setting OKRs for the engineering organization
  • Collaborate with other product development partners to set long-term and short-term roadmaps, and execution
  • Increase velocity to support business innovation and rapid experimentation with a healthy balance of quality and excellence
  • Provide the rest of the organization transparency into the development process, challenges, and opportunities
  • Attract, develop, and retain world-class engineering talent passionate about our mission. Establish accountability within teams, focusing on measurable output and results
  • Determine the best way to balance people and budget across our key product development centers in NYC and Buenos Aires, as well as how we should further incorporate remote talent
  • Anticipate challenges and bottlenecks in the next phases of growth and map out "the right" solutions to address those without unnecessarily over-investing
  • Provide thought leadership on our data infrastructure and the best way to leverage data to deliver delightful experiences for our customers
  • Build on what has worked well with our existing culture while challenging the norms holding us back from achieving our mission and vision
  • Drive technological innovation to support our complex ingredient sourcing, production, and fulfillment logistics
  • Lead the migration from the remaining legacy technology stack to the latest stack
  • Design and implement a scalable microservices architecture capable of handling 100k-1m requests per minute
  • Drive R&D initiatives to keep CookUnity at the forefront of food tech innovation. Adopt and invest in AI aggressively
  • Implement a full software testing lifecycle to ensure clean codebases and bug-free releases
  • Instate policies and design patterns across IT departments to ensure code quality and consistency

Our take

CookUnity is a meal subscription service which connects consumers with some of the country's best known chefs, including Esther Choi, Chris Ratel and Andy Mendez. Consumers can select from a menu of handcrafted meals that cater to a wide variety of palates and dietary preferences. Believing that healthy food fuels stronger communities, CookUnity contributes to an ongoing partnership and donation with the Food Bank For New York City.

The New York founded business hit the headlines for its upward trajectory in 2020, where it secured 15.5 million in funding and saw an expected boost not just in demand, but in the supply of top culinary talent at a time when restaurants were struggling.

While there’s a wide world of meal plan delivery services, CookUnity has a jump on much of the competition as it’s the first service that connects such eminent chefs directly with the customer. This has allowed it to expand across much of the US, and it now prepares over 10 million meals annually for its 50,000 subscribers.

With most of the urban US now covered by its service, CookUnity is moving into the next phase of its growth, expanding the range of sellers and food products on the platform, and has plans to offer family-sized portions, brekfast options and cooking classes using its existing physical and digital infrastructure. This will enable it to grow into an all-in-one meal subscription service over the coming years.

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Freddie

Company Specialist

Insights

Top investors

Few candidates hear
back within 2 weeks

30% employee growth in 12 months

Company

Employee endorsements

My opinions are valued

"There is no limit when proposing changes, new ideas or exploring different possibilities that can make an impact to the business. There is no "we..."

Funding (last 2 of 9 rounds)

Apr 2023

$47m

LATE VC

Sep 2021

$47m

SERIES B

Total funding: $119.3m

Company benefits

  • πŸ“ˆ We grow, you grow: Stock Options Plan granted on Day 1
  • πŸ– Unlimited PTO policy and paid holidays off
  • 🐣 Family leave: 12 weeks for primary caregiver and 6 weeks for secondary caregiver, fully paid
  • πŸ•― Compassionate Leave: 3-5 days each time the need arises
  • πŸ₯™ A generous amount of CookUnity credits to enjoy our amazing meals, added to your account, monthly
  • πŸ§˜πŸ½β€β™€οΈ Wellness perks: access to a nutritional coach and fitness subsidies to build a healthy lifestyle
  • πŸ‘©πŸΎβ€πŸ« Personalized Spanish coach

Company values

  • Pursue Excellence: We’re fuelled by a relentless pursuit of excellence
  • Make it Simple: We always strive to do more with less
  • Harmony: We believe that greatness comes from goodness
  • Encourage Growth: We embrace a growth mindset and focus on making ourselves better each day
  • Celebrate Diversity and Creativity: We honor the individuality of associates, chefs and the people we serve
  • Make an Impact: We want to design experiences that make people happy, healthy and well
  • Build Unity: Because we're all connected and we’re strongest when united

Company HQ

Bedford-Stuyvesant, NY

Leadership

Born on a farm in Argentina, Mateo is on a mission to make great real food available for all and a more fair and sustainable food system. He has built 10+ food brands that delivered more than 25M meals combined in the last 13 years, including SUSHIPOP and La Causa.

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