Head of Retention

Fresh Food, Happy Dogs.

We believe dogs deserve the healthiest, most natural and tastiest meals - with none of the nasties. That’s why we make FRESHly prepared food, cooked just like you would at home and delivered direct to our customers in perfect portions. As a B-Corp certified company, you’re joining a sustainable business that genuinely cares about our people, our products and our impact on the planet. Our goal is simple: to help dogs live healthier, happier, and longer lives, while leaving humans smiling after every interaction.

We’ve come a long way since our co-founders (Kev & Dave), hand delivered the very first Butternut Box. Today, we feed hundreds of thousands of hungry dogs across the UK and Europe - but we won’t stop until we’re feeding dogs everywhere. To get there, we need a team of brilliant people who share that ambition to come and work for us. 

🐾 The job: 

Please note that this role will close on: 25th September 2026. 

We are looking for a strategic, commercially-obsessed Head of Retention CRM to own the experience of our customers. This is a brand-new role designed to take our CRM function from a "reactive service" to a proactive, world-class lifecycle engine. Reporting to our Director of CRM & Commercial, you will lead a talented team of 4-5 to own the end-to-end customer lifecycle across 10+ markets.

You’ll be the architect of our CRM strategy - optimising our tech stack (we use Iterable and SMS at scale), refining our event-based journeys, and ensuring every touchpoint, from the first "hello" to a re-onboarding journey, is optimised for both RoI and customer delight lens. This role is not about open and click rates; it’s about LTV, churn prevention, and commercial impact.

❓ What you’ll do:

Strategy & Architecture

• Lead the North Star: Own the end-to-end CRM lifecycle strategy across the active customer journey: onboarding, engagement, upsell, churn prevention and re-onboarding.
• Scale the Plumbing: Design and execute a CRM architecture that works seamlessly across international markets, ensuring quick delivery times and low incident rates.
• Break the Silos: Partner with Digital Product, Marketing, and Customer Love to ensure CRM is integrated into the wider customer experience, not just an island.

Commercial & Financial Ownership

• Own the Numbers: You are directly responsible for revenue-impacting KPIs: retention rates, churn deflection performance, engagement.
• Prove&Prioritise: You’ll help define how lifecycle CRM is measured and attributed and how competing initiatives can be prioritised accordingly.
• CRM Vendor Management: Manage CRM vendor relationships, renegotiate contracts and explore new options to increase RoI.

People Leadership

• Manage the Managers: You’ll lead a team of 4.
• Coaching & Upskilling: Your goal is to inspire and elevate the team, helping them hit their objectives while fostering a culture of innovation and accountability.

👀 What we're looking for: 

• CRM Expert - You have strong experience managing CRM programmes and teams across 5+ markets and languages and across different remits
• Lifecycle Architect - Significant experience designing and executing customer journeys
• D2C/Subscription Expert: You have deep experience in a high-growth subscription or high purchase frequency ecommerce environment. You understand the "habit formation" required to keep customers coming back.
• Commercial Navigator: You think in terms of P&L. You're fluent in retention curves, LTV, discount economics and subscription churn, and you're comfortable building business cases and making ROI-driven trade-offs.
• Focused Prioritisation: You've run a function with far more inbound than capacity. You're assertive, you prioritise ruthlessly, and you have the humility to listen and the confidence to push back on low-impact requests.
• Analytical Rigour: You don't just report on data; you find the "so what." You're comfortable with test vs control, cohort analysis and incrementality, and you can attribute impact in areas where it isn't obvious.
• Tech-Savvy: You know your way around a modern CRM stack. You can partner effectively with Engineering and Data teams to launch scalable templates, event schemas, deliverability measurement.
• Empathetic Leader: You’re a "people first" leader who enjoys coaching senior individual contributors and managers. You have the humility to listen and the assertiveness to push back on low-impact requests.
• Dog Lover: It’s a plus if you have a furry friend at home, but a love for dogs is mandatory! 🐶

⏳ The interview process:

1. Initial call with your dedicated Talent Acquisition Partner, carried out remotely. 
2. Skills interview, for 90 minutes, in person. This stage will include an in interview task. 
3. Behaviours interview, for 45 minutes, followed by two 45 minute Leadership interviews with members of our C-suite in person. 

We usually expect our interview process to take 3-5 weeks, end to end. 

🙌 Our benefits:

• 25 days holiday (plus 8 bank holidays) and an additional day for every year of service up to 5 years
• 5 additional, paid 'paws' days off per year dedicated to your learning, development or personal wellbeing. Hit pause when you need it most
• £500 personal learning & development budget to sharpen your skills
• Share options grant - everyone owns a piece of Butternut's success.
• A significant discount on our Fresh food, to keep your own dogs as healthy as our customers
• Enhanced parental leave
• Flexible core working hours
• Cycle to work scheme
• Pension with NEST
• Private Medical Insurance with Vitality
• Private Dental Insurance with Bupa
• Paid time off for fertility treatments and pregnancy loss
• Paid sabbaticals for squad members with 5 or more years service at Butternut
• Discounted gym access through MyGymDiscounts
• Lots of office dogs (Ajax, Peggy, Chief, Louis, Hansen, Winnie and many more….)

💡 Important things to note:

• We recommend getting your application in as soon as possible. We reserve the right to close the role early. 

• Our team thrives on collaboration. We spend 3 days a week in our West London office (Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday) and 2 days working from wherever you’re most productive. Because being together is a big part of our culture, we’re looking for someone within a comfortable commutable distance to London.

• We’re a small (but mighty!) recruitment team. We aim to respond to everyone personally, but if we’re flooded with brilliant applications, we may need to close the role early. We appreciate your patience while we review applications. 

• For this specific role, we’re unable to offer visa sponsorship, so you’ll need the right to work in the UK.

❗️We believe in a seat at the table for everyone. 

Butternut Box is an equal opportunity employer. We believe that to make the best food for all dogs, we need a team that represents all humans. We celebrate different nationalities, backgrounds, experiences and perspectives. We are specifically committed to increasing representation from underrepresented groups. We want a strong, diverse team built from different identities and lived experiences. We’re not perfect, but we are dedicated to the ongoing work of building an inclusive, supportive place where you can do the best work of your career.