CTO / VP of Engineering
What We Do
Wagmo is a new type of pet health company focused on empowering and inspiring responsible pet parenting through top-tier pet benefits provided by employers. From everyday care to rainy-day emergencies, we offer tech-enabled solutions that are optimized for value and flexibility so that our pet parents always feel confident that they are giving their pets the care they deserve.
What’s Important To Us
We solve hard problems all day long but hang out with dogs while we do it. We value authenticity and efficiency and have no time for egos. We prioritize performance over pedigree, compensate fairly, and never take ourselves too seriously. Our values are core to who we are and how we operate. We talk about them all the time. These are not just things posted on a wall. We will interview for them, hold each other accountable to them, and make sure we work with every single person we interact with in a way that's consistent with these values.
About The Role
As CTO / VP of Engineering at Wagmo, you will lead the company through its next inflection point: transforming Wagmo into an AI-first technology platform powering a broader pet healthcare ecosystem. This is a build-and-transform role with direct impact on how the company scales, operates, and delivers value.
You will own Wagmo’s technical vision and execution across core platforms and data systems, evolving how technology powers both internal operations and customer-facing experiences. This includes modernizing our architecture to support AI-native capabilities and leveraging Wagmo’s unique data assets to drive scale, insight, and differentiated products for employers and pet parents.
You will lead a high-performance organization, setting a high technical bar and fostering a culture of ownership, experimentation, and accountability. Reporting directly to senior leadership, you will partner closely with Product, Operations, and the executive team to ensure technology is a true growth lever.
Location: This is a hybrid role based in NYC; candidates must be willing and able to work in-office three days per week.
Core Responsibilities
Lead, grow, and inspire a high-performing engineering organization, setting a strong culture of ownership, technical rigor, continuous learning, and disciplined execution - with AI fluency embedded across the team.
Define and drive the evolution of Wagmo’s technical architecture, ensuring scalable, secure, and resilient systems that support enterprise customers, platform growth, and AI-enabled workflows.
Build and scale Wagmo’s data engineering and analytics foundation, treating data as a first-class product that powers AI workflows, operational decision-making, and customer-facing insights.
Own the application of AI across the platform - identifying where automation, agentic systems, and data-driven intelligence meaningfully improve internal operations and customer-facing experiences.
Partner closely with executive leadership, Product, and Customer teams to align technical strategy and delivery with business priorities, enterprise requirements, and long-term platform bets.
Establish and maintain best-in-class engineering and AI development practices, including CI/CD, observability, security, model evaluation, documentation, and architectural decision-making to enable speed without sacrificing quality.
Build and operationalize engineering systems that improve productivity, prioritization, and accountability, while empowering engineering leaders and ICs to own outcomes end-to-end.
Manage technical debt and AI experimentation with a pragmatic, ROI-driven lens — balancing near-term delivery with long-term scalability, compliance, and maintainability.
Serve as a visible technical leader across the company, clearly communicating tradeoffs, timelines, risks, and investment decisions to executives, stakeholders, and external partners.Own Wagmo’s security posture and compliance programs, including maintaining SOC 2, managing vendor risk, and leading incident response in partnership with internal and external stakeholders.
What You’ll Need To Be Successful
Proven experience in a senior engineering leadership role, ideally as a SVP of Engineering, CTO or similar, with a track record of managing and scaling engineering teams of 15+ members.
Strong technical expertise in modern software development, including architecture, security, compliance, and hands-on experience with technologies such as Python, Django, Golang, React, and Next.js.
Deep expertise as a subject matter expert in AI/ML engineering, including experience with data science workflows, model lifecycle management, and leveraging generative AI to build differentiated products and drive operational efficiency.
Track record of delivering enterprise-level B2B platforms or SaaS solutions—ideally in a regulated or highly secure industry like insurance, healthcare, or fintech.
Exceptional leadership and interpersonal skills to build trust, motivate engineers, and elevate the engineering team’s visibility and impact within the broader organization.
Experience driving performance management, goal setting, and operational excellence in a fast-growing, high-growth startup environment transitioning from Series A to Series B and beyond.
Ability to pragmatically address technical debt and legacy system challenges while maintaining focus on delivering scalable, high-quality solutions.
Strong communication skills with the ability to engage effectively with executive leadership, product teams, and cross-functional stakeholders.
Willingness and ability to work onsite in New York at least three days a week, collaborating closely with leadership and product teams.
A growth mindset and pattern recognition skills to quickly assess current team capabilities and technology landscape, and to define and execute a clear vision for technical and organizational maturity.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field preferred; advanced degrees or relevant certifications are a plus.
Why Consider This Role?
Revolutionize the pet health industry by shaping solutions that improve the lives of pets and their families.
Join a rapidly growing, VC-backed startup where ownership, impact, and collaboration drive success.
Work in a fast-paced, high-performance environment—this is not a traditional 9-to-5 job, but one that offers flexibility and autonomy in exchange for dedication and impact.
Key Benefits
Comprehensive health, vision, and dental coverage
HSA/FSA
401(k) retirement planning with employer matching
Unlimited paid time off
Annual company holidays
Additional company-wide recharge days off
12 weeks parental leave for eligible employees
Company paid Wagmo pet wellness and insurance plans
Regular company-wide events and team gatherings
Pet-friendly office
Catered lunches
We here at Wagmo strive to build a workforce composed of individuals with diverse backgrounds, abilities, minds, and identities that will help us to grow, not only as a company, but also as individuals. Wagmo is an Equal Opportunity Employer.