VP of Product

Tovala; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 250,000 - 350,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible PTO

Comprehensive healthcare

401k with match

Free Tovala Smart Oven and discountedT

Paid holidays and winter shutdown

Perks and learning stipend

Job summary

Tovala in Chicago, IL is seeking a data-forward, customer-obsessed VP of Product to lead strategy and execution across food, hardware, software, and customer experience.

You will partner with leadership, engineering, operations, marketing, and culinary teams to deliver magical, differentiated experiences that retain and delight customers.

This role reports to the executive team and guides a growing product organization in a fast-paced, hybrid work environment.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in product management, including DTC with physical products.
• Experience leading product teams in cross-functional, growth-stage environments.
• Proven track record delivering outcomes across multiple product lines.
• Ability to learn fast and iterate with teams.
• Strong coaching and mentoring skills.

Responsibilities

• Build a unified understanding of customer pain points to inform strategy.
• Establish repeatable customer feedback loops via interviews and surveys.
• Drive accountability for insight quality and learning from customers.
• Own a living, company-wide view of customer needs and opportunities.
• Communicate the customer pain points across the org.
• Develop a clear product strategy aligned to company goals.
• Synthesize data-informed strategy with input from product managers.
• Coach product managers to contribute to strategy.
• Test and validate strategy against customer insights.
• Collaborate with cross-functional partners to set priorities and multi-year vision.
• Translate strategy into roadmaps with measurable goals.
• Grow and level up the product team.
• Coach UX research and design on product work standards.
• Work with product, software, and data partners to move ideas to live tests quickly.
• Partner with marketing, tech, culinary, finance, and operations for testing and launches.

Skills

Strategic product leadership

Customer obsession

Cross-functional leadership

Data-driven decision making

Influential communicator

Fast mover

Coach and mentor

DTC / physical products experience

Job description

We're Tovala, a food-tech company reinventing home cooking to save consumers time. Through an innovative combination of hardware, software, and fresh food delivery, we make it incredibly simple for anyone to prepare and enjoy delicious, home-cooked meals without sacrificing time to do whatever matters to them. Through our superior technology, product experience and food quality, we have separated Tovala from the busy pack of other meal delivery businesses. In the process, we've amassed a loyal, rapidly growing following and our retention, product engagement and customer NPS are all best-in-class. We've raised over $100mm from great investors like Left Lane Capital, Origin Ventures, Y Combinator and Comcast Ventures and have invested strongly in building a unique culture that fosters growth, personal development and camaraderie.

Position Summary:

At Tovala, product is at the heart of everything we do. We are looking for a data-forward, customer-obsessed VP of Product to lead the strategy, and execution of our product portfolio across food, hardware, software, and customer experience.

This role will lead our product team to develop a unified, insight-driven product strategy that connects deeply with our customers, empowers cross-functional teams, and accelerates our ability to test, learn, and deliver. This role will partner closely with leadership, engineering, operations, marketing, and culinary teams to ensure Tovala continues to deliver magical, differentiated experiences that retain and delight customers.

Location: Chicago, IL (Hybrid)

How you will spend your time at Tovala:

• Building a unified understanding of customer pain points informed by customer insights that inform both company and product strategy
• Establishing robust and repeatable customer feedback loops across a variety of interactions with customers (i.e. interviews, surveys, customer support tickets, etc)
• Driving accountability for insight quality and depth, raising the bar on how we learn from our customers.
• Owning and continuously refining a living, company-wide picture of customer needs and product opportunities.
• Ensuring that that unified understanding of customer pain points is clearly communicated across the organization.
• Developing a clear and coherent product strategy that ladders up to the overall company strategy
• Synthesizing a proactive, data-informed product strategy that aligns with company goals and customer insights with strong input from product managers
• Coaching our product managers to materially contribute to the strategy
• Pressure-testing that strategy against the unified understanding of customer pain points
• Collaborating with cross-functional partners to define priorities, success metrics, and a multi-year vision.
• Leveraging the product team to translate strategy into clear roadmaps, ensuring every initiative ties back to measurable goals.
• Growing and levelling up the product team
• Coaching both product managers and UX research and design, defining what the standard for great product work should look like
• Working with the product team, as well as software and data partners, to improve and evolve our ability to move ideas from concept to live test quickly, across the full breadth of our product
• Partnering with marketing, tech, culinary, finance, and operations teams to ensure successful testing and subsequently launch of new product initiatives

About You:

• Strategic product leadership: 8+ years of product management experience, including experience in direct-to-consumer (DTC) businesses with physical consumer products, ideally within food, meal delivery, grocery, or other perishable/recurring subscription categories. Proven experience leading product teams in cross-functional environments; experience at a growth-stage company preferred.
• Customer obsession: Deep empathy for customers and proven ability to translate their needs into successful products.
• Proven track record: Demonstrated success building product strategies, aligning stakeholders, and delivering outcomes across multiple product lines and/or in strongly cross functional environments.
• Fast mover: Clearly skilled at learning and failing fast, both individually and by developing a team, and their processes and experiments, to do so as well.
• Coach and mentor: Strong ability to guide and grow a product team with a variety of backgrounds and experiences
• Influential communicator: Exceptional at aligning executives and teams, simplifying complexity, and ensuring clarity of direction.
• Data-forward mindset: Skilled at integrating customer insights, experimentation and quantitative analysis to guide decisions.

Tovala uses market data, geography, and placement of internal employees to determine salary. Additionally, we offer all employees real ownership in the company in the form of a competitive equity package.

• Flexible paid time off (with a minimum of 15 days off you are highly encouraged to take)
• Comprehensive healthcare coverage we really invest in
• 401k with match
• Free Tovala Smart Oven and discounted Tovala meals
• Paid holidays and our winter holiday office shutdown where the offices and facilities close for a week around Christmas and New Years
• Various other perks - recognition programs, continued learning stipend, casual dress code, in-office coffee, snacks and drinks, and Tovala swag

Our Values

• Put the Team First: We put what is best for the broader team ahead of what is best for ourselves or our immediate department.
• Get S#!t Done (Well): We celebrate people at all levels for delivering high impact work that expands the bounds of what we're able to do.
• Connect the Dots: We engage with curiosity to learn how our work impacts others so that we can problem-solve holistically and work collaboratively.
• Be Direct: We share our perspective openly and directly, even when it feels difficult to do so.
• Embrace the Obstacles: We rise to meet challenges with a sense of urgency, resolve, and optimism.
• Champion the Customer: We consider and prioritize our customer in all of our decisions

At Tovala we're committed to building a workplace that represents a variety of backgrounds, skills, and perspectives and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Everyone is welcome here!