Veterinary Academic and Key Relations Manager

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

Veterinary professionals are the backbone of trust in animal health. For The Farmer's Dog, building a real place within that community means showing up with credible education, strong partnerships, and real value for veterinary professionals and the patients they serve.

We're looking for a resourceful, strategic, and relationship-driven leader to grow two critical areas of our veterinary strategy: our university programs and our network of influential veterinary professionals. You'll deepen our presence across veterinary schools, build relationships with respected voices across the profession, and execute scalable initiatives that advance thoughtful, credible conversations around fresh nutrition. If you’re looking to make an impact in the veterinary community in a scalable, novel, and creative way, and have a “builders mindset” then you belong on our team.

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

• Execute and scale our university initiatives across campuses and digital channels, driving measurable impact with the next generation of veterinary professionals.
• Own and scale our Student Ambassador Program, from sourcing and interviewing candidates through onboarding, training, ongoing management, and expansion across additional veterinary schools.
• Manage and grow TFD's residency sponsorship and academic research programs, including student research support, manuscript development, and publication support, helping develop today's residents and researchers into future educators, specialists, and veterinary leaders.
• Develop and manage relationships across the academic and veterinary community, including school leadership, faculty, residents, student organizations, clinical leaders, specialists, and emerging voices like veterinary creators, identifying who can become meaningful long-term partners.
• Translate those relationships into credibility-building initiatives across speaking, education, content, events, research, advisory work, and media.
• Represent TFD across veterinary schools, conferences, specialty meetings, and industry events, building relationships while staying close to the people, trends, and competitive dynamics shaping where we invest next.
• Build scalable systems and own quarterly reporting for university and Key Relations initiatives, measuring student reach, relationship activation, ambassador activity, program growth, and outcomes.
• Partner cross-functionally with Veterinary, Conferences, Marketing, Communications, Research, and Field Vet teams to ensure university and Key Relations efforts reinforce the broader veterinary strategy.
• Attend virtual and in-person industry events, conferences, universities, practices, and meetings to speak, network, and build connections within the veterinary community (40-50% travel required).

We're Excited About You Because

• You have deep familiarity with the veterinary profession and understand how credibility is built across academic, clinical, and industry settings.
• A DVM/VMD is strongly preferred, though exceptional candidates with significant veterinary academic, professional relations, or industry experience will be considered.
• You are an exceptional relationship builder who can develop trusted, long-term partnerships with faculty, specialists, students, clinical leaders, and other influential voices.
• You are a strong communicator and public speaker who can represent The Farmers Dog confidently across campuses, conferences, industry events, and one-on-one conversations.
• Ideally you have built or scaled programs before and are comfortable owning strategy, execution, and measurement in a fast-moving environment.
• You are mission driven, intellectually curious, and willing to roll up your sleeves, whether that's building the roadmap, picking up the phone to open a new relationship, or learning something new from every visit.
• You are always looking to improve your environment and take things from good to great, and you seek out contrasting opinions so you can learn and grow.
• You are detail-oriented and proactive, you thrive as a self-starter and excel in managing multiple projects simultaneously.
• You love dogs, people, the veterinary profession, and are genuinely interested in building a brighter future for all.

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 perspectives — leading to stronger decisions and deeper relationships.

We anchor this belief in a simple phrase: “Everyone’s welcome at the dog park.” No matter your background, identity, or role, there’s space for you here. There’s no one way to show up at the dog park— just shared space, mutual respect, and the freedom to be yourself. Being included is just the beginning, it’s about contributing your voice, growing through challenges, and building trust through shared goals. This philosophy guides how we lead, how we hire, how we communicate, and how we grow.
                    
We continuously evaluate to ensure we are creating a consistent experience that cultivates belonging for all employees, from hiring and performance reviews to talent development. We also believe Belonging happens in everyday moments of connection; lunch with a new teammate, a shared laugh, or a quick story about your weekend. Our structure includes biannual employee surveys, manager training, TFD camps, and support from Humans to ensure we’re listening and learning from our Team.

Together, these efforts reflect what Belonging means at TFD: a culture where everyone can thrive.

A Few of Our Best Benefits

• Dog-friendly office in SoHo
• Market-competitive compensation and equity packages
• Comprehensive Healthcare, Dental, and Vision
• Company supported mental health benefits
• 12 week paid parental leave
• Competitive 401k plan with company match
• Flexible PTO 
• Discounted fresh food for your pup
• Your pet interrupting video calls (and in-person meetings) is now a feature, not a bug

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

The Farmer's Dog, Inc. is an equal employment opportunity employer and does not discriminate in hiring on the basis of sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, creed, national origin, physical or mental disability, protected veteran status or any other legally protected characteristic or status. For more information, please visit Know Your Rights.

Reasonable Accommodations

TFD complies with applicable federal, state, and local disability laws and makes reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities.  If a reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please contact humansops@thefarmersdog.com.

We're Here to Help

We’re happy to answer any questions you may have about the position or our hiring process - please reach out at careers@thefarmersdog.com.

We commit to building a competitive compensation package and company environment for all individuals to thrive. We believe in competitive base compensation rooted in location specific market data and performance along with equity ownership in the company that allows every team member to build their personal wealth as the company grows, just as much as we believe in fostering a culture that supports our team members personally, professionally, and holistically. For this role the anticipated hiring base compensation range is USD annual and the compensation offered will include a robust market competitive package of base and equity. In addition to your base compensation offer you will also receive equity ownership in the company. More information about the value of this equity will be shared at the time of offer. This range is representative of NYC Market Data if you are applying to this role outside of the NYC area the range may change.

NYC Pay Range$140,000—$160,000 USD