Careers

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 MBA Finance Intern, you will be in charge of various projects to improve financial reporting/tracking and provide insights to the culinary, operations, and marketing team for decision making. You will work directly with the Director of Finance, Matt Taube (Booth alum) and CFO/COO, Taryn Aronson (Kellogg alum).

About You

• You're interested in startups and excited to work in a fast-paced environment
• You have a background in data analytics, financial analysis, and/or accounting
• 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

• Identify and implement efficiencies in the reporting and data gathering processes
• Arm the culinary, operations, and marketing team with insights and data for decision making
• Provide analysis and impact of potential cost take out initiatives
• Analyze LTV by customer segment / marketing channel
• Provide variance analysis for the team and investors
• Answer ad hoc questions/requests from the team and investors

As Tovala’s MBA Operations Intern, you will be in charge of various projects that implement efficiencies to Tovala's food operations. You will be working directly with the Operations Manager, Cen Qian (Booth alum) and CFO/COO, Taryn Aronson (Kellogg alum).

About You

• You're interested in startups and excited to work in a fast-paced environment
• You have a background in data analytics, strategy/operations, or food industry
• 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

• Identify and implement efficiencies in food operations based on time studies
• Gather data and build models to help culinary team control food cost
• Improve data accuracy in packaging inventory management system
• Design and carry out new process to streamline information flow between operations and finance

As Tovala’s Finance Intern, you’ll be working directly with the Director of Finance and CFO/COO to provide financial reporting and analysis to help guide Tovala’s strategy.

About You

• You're interested in startups and excited to work in a fast-paced environment
• You have a background in data analytics, financial analysis, and/or accounting
• 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

• Dive into data and gather insights for key business focus areas
• Identify and implement efficiencies in the reporting and data gathering process
• Track KPIs and drivers for results
• Provide financial variance analysis
• Support the monthly financial close activities
• Answer ad hoc questions/requests from the team and investors

Our Data Engineering team ensures that everyone at Tovala, from the Executive team to our Culinary team, can make data-informed decisions by having easy access to relevant and correct information. A Data Engineering Intern at Tovala will complete an infrastructure project that materially contributes to our data pipeline and data analysis tools.

About You

• Pursuing or completed a Bachelor’s Degree in Data Engineering, Data Science, Computer Science, or related.
• Experience working with Python and SQL.
• You are analytical and detail oriented.
• You get giddy at the thought of helping answer questions like “What do our customers think about our meals that have kimchi in them?”. Bonus points if you also thought that question is vague and have ideas or follow up questions to better define what is being asked.
• You love using software to automate parts of your daily life.
• You enjoy getting your hands dirty in code but also love putting on your data analysis hat.
• 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 work closely with our lead data engineer to:
• Build, maintain, and improve upon Tovala’s data pipeline
• Interact with various stakeholders at Tovala to build useful Dashboards in our BI tool that sits on top of our cleaned data warehouse
• Perform deeper data analysis to uncover insights and provide answers to important questions across our teams

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.

As a Tovala Social Media Intern, you will work with our marketing team to help build and execute organic social media strategies that drive customer acquisition and respond in near real-time to customer and prospect questions and comments.

About You

• Bachelor’s Degree in process or completed.
  
• You're interested in startups and excited to work in a fast-paced environment.
• You’re a social media fanatic and understand best practices for each network.
  
• You’re able to balance a range of tasks at once.
  
• You are creative and strive to find new ways to grow an audience and loyal followers.
  
• You are strategic and can plan an entire content campaign from conceptualization to execution.
  
• You understand what it means to be a brand on social media and can create copy that speaks for the brand & engages our audience in our brand voice.
  
• You love producing and editing relevant visual deliverables such as video & stills.
  
• 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

• Manage 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.
• Partner with creative teams to develop and produce new content campaigns for multiple channels.
• Acquire new customers via Tovala’s organic social channels.
• Engage community of followers through planned campaigns and respond through in-the-moment comments and messages.
• Manage data tracking and analytics systems to gauge success and create plans.
• Develop and manage monthly and quarterly strategic plans and goals.

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

For our data analytics intern role at Tovala, you’ll own the development of all dashboards, analytics systems, attribution, and automated rules needed to ensure the health and growth of the company’s customer funnel over time.

About You

• Bachelor’s Degree required. Data Science, Statistics, Engineering, Quantitative Finance or other analytics- related field or equivalent practical experience preferred.
• Minimum of 2 years of experience, preferably in e-commerce or consumer company. - 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 have a strong background in marketing analytics with the understanding of campaign testing, refinement, and optimization of digital campaigns to deliver exceptional results.
• 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 work closely with our lead data engineer and be involved in analytic efforts to assess marketing initiatives and develop better understanding of marketing effectiveness.
• This position will help Tovala evaluate marketing campaign 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 work with marketing and funnel data, performing QA when needed, and diving into the database when needed to solve problems.
• You’ll help with reporting across a group of marketing stakeholders and use our data to succinctly communicate performance, areas for improvement, and shared success.
• You’ll develop self-service web based tools, in concert with our engineering and data science teams, to deliver high level views of performance to internal stakeholders.
• Develop and maintain performance standards for all aspects of food production

As a Director of Strategy and Operations 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 devising strategies and executing on making our process more efficient, higher quality and cheaper. You will focus on our food operation (everything from procuring the food to packaging to shipping), and support our oven operation, particularly as it relates to getting ovens to our customers.

About You

• 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 understand and believe in the importance of delicious, healthy food.You have an MBA.
• Management consulting and/or operations experience is preferred.
• You live in Chicago or are willing to move.

About the role

We have built a product that is truly changing the way people eat at home. It’s convenient, it’s delicious and it’s healthy. We’ve only just started optimizing our operation, but intend to grow our strategy/ops team and leverage our engineering talent to build a world-class, state of the art food operation.

You would report directly to our COO and work with her 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.

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.

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.

As a data analytics manager at Tovala, you’ll own the development of all dashboards, analytics systems, attribution, and automated rules needed to ensure the health and growth of the company’s customer funnel over time.

About You

• Bachelor’s Degree required. Data Science, Statistics, Engineering, Quantitative Finance or other analytics- related field or equivalent practical experience preferred.
• Minimum of 2 years of experience, preferably in e-commerce or consumer company.
• 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 have a strong background in marketing analytics with the understanding of campaign testing, refinement, and optimization of digital campaigns to deliver exceptional results.
• 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 analytic efforts to assess marketing initiatives and develop better understanding of marketing effectiveness.
• This position will help Tovala evaluate marketing campaign 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 take ownership of marketing and funnel data, performing QA when needed, implementing policies and procedures to produce better data, and diving into the database when needed to solve problems.
• You’ll maintain consistent reporting cadences across a group of marketing stakeholders and use our data to succinctly communicate performance, areas for improvement, and shared success.
• You’ll develop self-service web based tools, in concert with our engineering and data science teams, to deliver high level views of performance to internal stakeholders.
• 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