Job Description
Description Whisker is redefining what it means to live with cats—designing intelligent systems that remove friction, elevate the everyday, and celebrate the quiet brilliance of feline companionship. Today, Litter-Robot leads the category. Tomorrow, an entire ecosystem that expands what’s possible for cats and the people who love them. We believe the future is feline. And we’re imagining that future today. We work onsite 4+ days a week, with our team based in Auburn Hills, Michigan, and Juneau, Wisconsin. Our team of 700+ passionate pet people thrives on collaboration, innovation, and the occasional office cameo from a four-legged friend. What You’ll Do We are hiring a Director of Software Engineering to work onsite at Whisker HQ to co-lead our technical evolution. This foundational leadership role partners closely with the VP of Software Engineering, anchoring engineering excellence for our core development team. This leader will oversee the scalable, resilient architecture and execution of all backend systems and shared platform services. A core focus is owning data flow from ingestion and modeling to storage and access creating clean pathways across teams. The Director will architect our internal metrics infrastructure, enabling all functions (Finance, Ops, Product, Executive) to self-serve trusted, timely insights. They will connect technical systems with business stakeholders, ensuring the data powering decisions is accurate and transparent. The role is also responsible for orchestrating backend/frontend development rhythm, ensuring cohesive APIs, predictable integration cycles, and fast, high-quality development. Ultimately, this leader will champion a culture of data clarity and technical precision, building systems that power our products and help the company operate with confidence. Summary: The Director of Software Engineering will lead the continued development and management of our digital products, product roadmap for our embedded systems, mobile apps, cloud infrastructure, Machine Learning engineering capabilities, product ideation and management, and the growth and management of our evolving team to ensure we’re delivering great products for our customers around the globe! Essential Duties and Responsibilities: This list of duties and responsibilities is not all-inclusive and may be expanded to include other duties and responsibilities as deemed necessary. Oversees the design, development, and implementation of software solutions, ensuring alignment with the company’s strategic objectives Manages the software engineering department’s resources, fostering innovation, and ensuring that software projects meet quality, budget, and timeline requirements Establishes and enforces engineering best practices and operational procedures to ensure scalable and secure software development processes Drives the adoption of new technologies and frameworks within the team, staying abreast of industry trends to keep the company at the cutting edge of technological advancements Fosters an environment of collaboration and communication within the engineering teams and across departments, ensuring that all stakeholders are informed and engaged in key project decisions Advances our software capabilities into sensor fusion, machine learning, pet recognition, IoT connectivity and in-app experience Develops a clear vision of machine learning solutions to enable AI-powered in-app experiences for pet health, well-being and interaction Beyond traditional machine learning algorithms, the Director recognizes opportunities where deep learning is applicable and scales the team to address those opportunities Recruits, grows, mentors and leads our core SW engineering team Develops other leaders and mentoring our junior engineers to deliver amazing products Balances the needs of today with where we want to be tomorrow Leads execution of Whisker’s software roadmap while shaping long-term architectural strategy Balances near-term delivery with platform investments that enable future innovation Elevates our connected product ecosystem across mobile, cloud, device, and data systems Oversees all backend services, APIs, cloud infrastructure, and shared platform systems Ensures APIs, mobile experiences, IoT connectivity, and cloud services operate as one cohesive system Ensures systems are scalable, secure, observable, and resilient Drives architectural clarity that supports both product performance and rapid iteration Leads the design and evolution of data pipelines across ingestion, modeling, storage, and reporting Builds clean, reliable systems that power product features and internal operations Enables Finance,