Careers

Tovala is looking for someone to join our team on a contract basis to assist in UX design and research that will be applied to the web.  As our UX Designer, you will be working cross-functionally with our marketing and design team as well as our development team to ensure our products deliver highly functional, inspired user experiences for our clients who are home cooking, effortlessly.

About You

• You are obsessed with our clients and want to create a best in class customer experience for them.  When they join the company, you know why, when they leave, you bring them back in, you know them inside and out and advocate for them.
• You’re excited about the company’s vision of changing the way people cook at home.
• You are a tinkerer… You always want to improve upon the current version of something.
• You excel in communication and presentation skills.
• You can manage multiple projects simultaneously and effectively prioritize.

About the Role

• Become a Tovala product expert, knowing every user journey, capability, and features like the back of your hand.
• Continuously improve/simplify the user experience.
• Great at translating goals, user research, and user flows into simple UIs.
• UX design experience (user research, persona development, storytelling, wireframing, prototyping, and user testing) with consumer mobile/web apps …  You know what is up and coming in this space.
• UX writing and content strategy experience across a variety of products/mediums, such as mobile apps, web apps, web content, and blogs.
• Strong working knowledge of Adobe Creative Cloud, Sketch, Figma, or Framer. Also, experience with InVision is a plus.

As a Lead Process Engineer on the Tovala team, you will be charged with scaling operations as well as finding and implementing efficiencies and optimizations across our entire operation. You’ll be responsible for designing and executing food manufacturing processes that will allow our facility to produce more efficiently, while enabling product variants, higher quality and lower costs. You will focus on our food operations team’s process and plans in order to ensure our facility has the correct layout and the labor is performing the correct tasks and the correct time.

About You

• You have a BS degree in Engineering or a related field.
• Minimum of 3 years’ experience managing process improvement teams in a food manufacturing environment.  Added bonus if it is in an environment with diverse products and rapid changes to the end product.
• You have experience devising and implementing strategies that yield efficiencies and optimize processes.
• You have experience managing people.
• You believe in taking a data-centric approach to decision making.
• You’re a team player willing to wear multiple hats and get your hands dirty.
• You’ve worked at a small-to-medium sized company or in a small-group work environment.
• You want to work in an environment that takes a people-first approach; values humility, integrity and ambition; and is focused on creating a culture that keeps people happy and challenged.
• You live in Chicago or are willing to move.

About the Role

As a member of our operations team, you will help build a world-class, state of the art food operation that delivers convenient, delicious and healthy food to our customers nationwide.  You would report to our VP of Hardware and Operations and work with him to devise projects to make our process better, cheaper and faster.  You would spearhead those projects, manage the people involved, and ensure that we are constantly measuring and tracking the effectiveness of each project. You’d work with industry leaders that have already figured a lot of this out to see what we can learn from others.
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Our ultimate goal for our food operation is to have one of the most streamlined, automated processes in the world. We believe we can achieve that because we are as much a technology company as we are a food company – and we plan to use our engineers to bring a unique perspective to our food operation.
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You would be tasked with working with our engineers to leverage their skills and expertise to help us build tools (both digital and physical) and create processes to make everything work better. This will run the gamut from how/where we source our products to leveraging different shipping methods/technologies to replicating processes across multiple, nationwide production facilities.

We’re looking for a creative storyteller with a passion for food and technology to join our team as a Brand Communications Manager. It’s an exciting time to join the team, as you’ll be responsible for helping us unlock our next phase of growth by building the Tovala brand narrative and driving our overall awareness, credibility, and trust. As a Brand Communications Manager at Tovala, you’ll report to the VP of Marketing and work closely with our marketing team to build, execute, and report on consumer-focused brand communication and marketing strategies that drive impactful results. You’ll craft compelling content strategies and narratives for a variety of external audiences (media, influencers, partners, Tovala prospects and customers) ensuring key message delivery, engagement, and positive brand affinity.

About You

• You have a bachelor’s degree and 5+ years of relevant consumer brand, communications, or PR experience.
• You understand what makes consumers tick and love telling powerful stories that resonate.
• You have a deep understanding of how branded content strategy, PR, media relations, influencers, and social media fits within the marketing mix, as well as knowledge of other marketing disciplines.
• You’ve been complimented on your strong sense of ownership and personal accountability.
• You’re extremely creative and strive to find new ways to grow an audience of loyal fans.
• You are strategic and can plan entire content and communications campaigns from conceptualization to execution.
• You have strong organizational skills and flexibility. The ability to adapt to change quickly and to tackle unfamiliar tasks and requests with positive attitude and resourcefulness.
• You have extremely strong written and verbal communication skills.
• You want to work in a highly cross-functional, collaborative environment that takes a people-first approach; values humility, integrity and ambition; and is focused on creating a culture that keeps people happy and challenged.
• Food has played (or continues to play) an important role in your life.

About the Role

Brand Communications Strategy:

• You’ll run owned content strategy, earned media, and organic social media for Tovala. That means you’ll work collaboratively with marketing leadership, external agencies, and our culinary team to craft compelling narratives around company initiatives, unique food content, and key messages. You’ll then design, communicate, and execute scalable communications strategies that drive impactful results.
• You’ll work closely with our in-house creative team and/or agencies to spearhead the development of videos, creative assets and written articles to enhance brand storytelling. These stories are part of a communications effort to expand our brand presence, which influences our product’s premium pricing position.
• You’ll develop owned, earned, and social brand narratives that leverage product developments, partnerships, events, company data and industry trends.
• You’ll be responsible for the strategy, execution, and reporting of a high volume of quality owned content and earned media to drive Tovala’s general awareness, trust, and credibility in the market.

Owned Media (Content Strategy & Social Media):

• You’ll help define Tovala’s social media strategy; identifying key audiences and messages. You’ll then manage the day-to-day operations of current organic social channels (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn) including responding to comments and questions in near real-time in the Tovala brand voice.
• You’ll partner with the marketing team to define and lead Tovala’s branded content strategy. This includes owning and executing against Tovala’s cross-channel editorial calendar.

Earned Media (Media Relations, PR, Influencer):

• You’ll proactively build and leverage relationships with relevant reporters and media figures, securing stories and features that will evangelize the Tovala brand, mission, and product offering.
• You’ll pitch and place Tovala media spokespersons on national and local television news, and in top print and online outlets.
• You’ll respond to inbound media requests and help prepare leadership for interviews, events, and appearances.
• You’ll lead the PR & Influencer strategy around relevant company announcements, product launches, partnerships, seasons (think holiday gifting), and evergreen value proposition messaging.
• You’ll build and execute influencer marketing strategies that get the right message in front of the right audiences.
• You’ll be responsible for reporting on the success of your efforts.

As Tovala’s Culinary Intern, you will be in charge of various projects that bridge the gap between our food development operation and our food production operation. You will be working directly with the Chief Culinary Officer, Alexander Plotkin and Tovala Sous Chef, Erik Chizeck.

About You

• You're interested in startups and excited to work in a fast-paced environment
• You have a background in professional cooking,  food service, or food science
• You have strong organizational skills and flexibility. The ability to adapt to change quickly and to tackle unfamiliar tasks and requests with positive attitude and resourcefulness
• You want to work in an environment that takes a people-first approach; values humility, integrity and ambition; and is focused on creating a culture that keeps people happy and challenged
• Food has played (or continues to play) an important role in your life

About the Role

• Design and execute projects that improve food quality and consistency
• Learn about procurement and the business of large scale food production
• Identify new processes to streamline recipes from the food development kitchen to the food production facility
• Assist with recipe testing, photo shoots, and overall food development at the development kitchen

As Tovala’s web intern, you will be in charge of writing new tests for our React web app with a focus on test-driven development and improved coverage. You will be working directly with the Lead Front-end Developer, Brian Krall and our web team (Danielle Aubry and Larry Gust).

About You

• You're interested in startups and excited to work in a fast-paced environment
• You know JavaScript well
• You love writing unit tests and are familiar with TDD
• Familiarity with modern front-end tooling
• Ability and passion for building things on the web
• Experience with popular JavaScript frameworks is a bonus (preferably React.js)

About the Role

• Write new unit tests within our testing environment (using Enzyme)
• Help identify opportunities for testing components and boost gaps in coverage
• Writing test plans and prioritizing scenarios to cover
• Create new process for required tests to be proceeded by functional code

As the data lead at Tovala, you’ll own the development and direction of data decision making at Tovala.  This means applying your expertise in almost every part of the company.  It could mean building models to predict food orders, designing data visualizations for the culinary team, or conducting marketing attribution analysis.

About You

• Bachelor’s Degree required. Data Science, Statistics, Engineering, Quantitative Finance or other analytics- related field or equivalent practical experience preferred.
• Minimum of 4 years of experience, preferably in e-commerce or consumer company.
• Experience with the data and modeling of customer acquisition in order to drive growth
• You’re an extremely quick, strategic thinker with exceptional experience leading highly analytical teams.
• You have industry experience in SQL, as well as one or more statistical tools (R, SAS, SPSS, Python).
• You have strong organizational skills and flexibility. The ability to adapt to change quickly and to tackle unfamiliar tasks and requests with positive attitude and resourcefulness.
• You want to work in an environment that takes a people-first approach; values humility, integrity and ambition; and is focused on creating a culture that keeps people happy and challenged.
• Food has played (or continues to play) an important role in your life.

About the Role

• This position will help Tovala evaluate operational performance, research industry trends, proactively identify and solve opportunities for value-added analysis, develop points of view to drive results, and frame recommendations for leadership.
• You’ll lead analytic efforts to assess marketing initiatives and develop better understanding of customer acquisition effectiveness.
• You’ll maintain consistent reporting cadences across a group of stakeholders and use our data to succinctly communicate performance, areas for improvement, and shared success.
• You’ll set the direction and iterate on the data needs across a variety of business functions.
• You’ll design operational data science models that are used to improve or predict business outcomes and enhance the customer experience.
• You’ll lead the data science team by nurturing, recruiting, and training future employees as the needs of Tovala grow and change.

Tovala is looking for a full-time production supervisor in order to supervise food packaging shifts, and assist with implementing QA, Food Safety and Employee Safety programs, as well as additional production shifts as we expand our operation.

As a production supervisor, you will oversee all operations in our kitchen and warehouse facilities during your respective shift. You would be responsible for ensuring food quality and safety as well as efficient utilization of our staff, equipment, and other resources to streamline our food production processes. You will also monitor performance standards for all aspects of our food production.

About You

• Three to five years of experience in manufacturing / production, experience in food production strongly preferred
• Two years of supervisory experience
• Experience creating and implementing food safety and/or employee safety programs, and general production documentation a plus. Experience with HACCP also a plus.
• Fluent in English, strong Spanish language skills a plus
• Comfortable with Microsoft Word and Excel; willing to learn new online tools and communication channels
• A self-starter with effective leadership, interpersonal, and verbal and written communication skills
• Ability to excel in a fast-paced work environment with a growing start-up company
• Ability to work evenings and/or weekends

As a Tovala Customer Success Teammate, you will work with the Support Team to help our customers have a seamless and enjoyable experience with our company — from ordering a Tovala Smart Oven to cooking a delicious Tovala Meal in their home. You’ll be the first line to greet incoming chats, calls and emails and ensure that any questions or concerns from our customers are addressed in a timely, appropriate and fun manner. You will aim to provide support that is above and beyond and work to add an element of surprise and delight to all customer interactions. You will also be providing vital insights to the rest of the team to help improve our products and services.

About You

• You have outstanding engineering talent, shown by great results, cool side projects, or open source contributions.
• You have a background in API design / consumption.
• You have experience working with designers and bridging the gap between graphic design and technical implementation.
• You have strong opinions on mobile app design and philosophy.
• Food has played (or continues to play) an important role in your life.
• You’ve written in Kotlin or are curious about doing so.

About the role

We have two mobile developers at Tovala - both are based in the Bay Area. Your role will be to support them and take on major responsibilities for new feature development and bug fixing on the Tovala Android app. The role can be in the Bay Area or Chicago (Tovala HQ).

You will be responsible for managing the Quality Assurance function by working with our Production Manager to ensure highly disciplined compliance with all product quality parameters and standards. You will ensure highly disciplined compliance with all regulatory and company defined food safety and sanitation standards, systems, procedures and practices in order to guarantee absolute quality and consistency of product. You will be responsible for monitoring FDA/HACCP/FSMA plans and SSOP’s as the process and/or regulations change and initiate improvements and upgrades at co-pack partners.

About You

• Three to five years of experience in food production
• Two years of supervisory experience
• Experienced with and capable of demonstrating strong understanding of HACCP or related food safety protocol
• Strong working knowledge of food safety, food regulations and basic food technology
• Fluent in English, strong Spanish language skills a plus
• Comfortable with Microsoft Word and Excel; willing to learn new online tools and communication channels
• A self-starter with effective leadership, interpersonal, and verbal and written communication skills
• Ability to excel in a fast-paced work environment with a growing start-up company
• Ability to work off-shifts (evening, weekend) as needed

About the role

We've developed healthy and delicious meals that are being shipped to customers across the country. We have already doubled our volume of food production since opening to public sales. As one of our frontline staff members on food production, you will help us grow our business even further.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Oversee all food safety procedures and operations for Tovala in our food production facilityDevelop and implement SOP’s, FDA/HACCP/FSMA, GMP’s, pest control, allergen control, QA documentation, and other food safety and quality elements required. Responsible for evaluation and resolution of vendor/ customer product quality issues
• Assist with managing and directing food production staff in collaboration with Production Manager and team, including hiring, training, and monitoring performance standards
• Monitor performance of kitchen equipment and machinery in collaboration with food production and engineering teams; communicates equipment malfunction to engineering team
• Support procurement and shipping operations in collaboration with operations and culinary teams
• Develop and maintain performance standards for all aspects of food production

As a product manager at Tovala, you’ll be responsible for defining, designing and managing implementation of consumer facing e-commerce solutions. You’ll be charged with delivering a unique and world class shopping experience to our Tovala website and app customers.

About You

• Bachelor’s Degree required; MBA preferred.
• Minimum of 3 years of experience, preferably in e-commerce or consumer company.
• You’re experienced Product Manager with a strong ecommerce background who can work closely with the Product and Engineering teams as well as senior leadership to help define and drive the product strategy at Tovala.
• You have experience working with highly cross-functional teams and can manage complex projects with multiple stakeholders and priorities.
• You want to work in an environment that takes a people-first approach; values humility, integrity and ambition; and is focused on creating a culture that keeps people happy and challenged.
• Food has played (or continues to play) an important role in your life.

About the role

• You’ll lead product strategy, develop product roadmaps, prioritize user stories, and drive product development from conceptualization, design and development, to launch and ongoing support in a fast-paced, agile environment.
• As the leader of the web and app product roadmap, you’ll ruthlessly prioritize key initiatives from inception to delivery while working with the executive team, key stakeholders, engineers, product design, and other cross-functional teams.
• You’ll learn the business inside and out, gathering high level requirements to ensure successful outcome for releases from small to large.
• Develop and maintain performance standards for all aspects of food production

As the lead IoT engineer at Tovala, you will work across the software and hardware teams to manage the connected features of our ovens. New initiatives include adding metrics to cook cycles to improve efficiency and reliability, better user notifications and interaction, and a new system to manage the fleet of connected ovens from one location. You'll be building tools to make our customers' experience better, to provide customer service with the data they need to help diagnose issue, and for the engineering team to improve the product.

Our ovens are based on the ElectricImp IoT platform.

About You

• You've worked with IoT electronics at the hobby level or higher
• You know how to read MCU datasheets to find that one register you need to set
• You've worked with digital on-board protocols like SPI and i2c
• You can write software that runs on servers to help manage IoT devices
• You have some familiarity with structuring a RESTful API
• You want to work in an environment that takes a people-first approach; values humility, integrity and ambition; and is focused on creating a culture that keeps people happy and challenged
• You understand and believe in the importance of delicious, healthy food