Sr. Manager, Animal Care Operations, Welfare, Safety & Risk

Position Overview
The Senior Manager of Animal Welfare, Safety & Risk is a strategic leadership role dedicated to championing the ethical care, safety, and well-being of all animals within our organization's ecosystem. This role is responsible for developing comprehensive welfare policies, identifying and mitigating organizational risks, and ensuring compliance with all local, state, and federal regulations. The Senior Manager will partner cross-functionally with store operations, , law department: environmental safety and health, veterinary services, public relations, customer escalations and external vendors to foster a culture of uncompromising animal care and safety.

Essential Job Functions: Through previous background and experience the candidate must demonstrate, with or without accommodation, the ability to...

• Must possess the cognitive ability to research, synthesize, and recommend revisions, continuous improvement initiatives, training and communication related to enterprise-wide welfare standards that comply with varying local, state and federal legal frameworks

• Proactively analyze complex data sets from multiple sources (stores, , vendors and third-party audits) to identify emerging trends and high-risk operational areas

• Required to prepare and deliver compliance reporting and presentations for stakeholders regarding the organization's risk profile

• Key leadership position within the Animal Care and welfare organizations providing input and insight into performance metrics, risk assessments, strategic animal welfare initiatives and key partner with field teams ensuring appropriate protocols, response, training and consistency within the field audit process

• Must remain available to enterprise partners across multiple time zones, days of the week to lead the organizational response to critical animal safety incidents, making rapid, high-impact decisions under pressure

• Act as the primary point of contact for government agencies and NGOs; must be able to professionally represent the company during high-scrutiny inquiries or inspections

• Act as the SME during severe in-store incidents (e.g., localized disease outbreaks, habitat failure/repair), advising retail leadership on immediate risk mitigation and public-facing communications regarding animal safety

• Partner with retail operations and omnichannel teams to ensure that new animal care protocols, habitat designs, and safety standards are practical, scalable, and seamlessly integrated into daily store workflows without disrupting retail productivity

• Mitigate significant brand risk and expense to ensure achievement of both KPI's and welfare requirements.

Duties and Responsibilities

Leads and collaborates with Field Leadership to develop, maintain and implement pet safety strategies and solutions, including brand risk assessments, business impact analysis, strategy selection, and documentation of pet safety, severity one and ethics case events.

Fosters and maintains collaborative relationships with external agencies and internal business units for regular review and improvement of training and processes.

Develops, initiates, maintains, and revises policies and procedures for the general operation of the Pet Safety program.

Strategic thought partner for addressing improvements for pet safety experience in pet care centers, vet hospitals, offsite services and mobile offerings.

Collaborate with other departments to direct brand-risk issues to appropriate existing channels for investigation and resolution. Consults with the inside/outside counsel as needed to resolve difficult legal risk issues.

Refines and directs communication to applicable fields and support teams as well as PR/Social Media teams on responses and replies.

Leads, develops and documents Ethics Case process execution and completion timelines.

Provides regular reporting to Sr. Director, Animal Care Operations and Vice President Animal Care and Education on incident status and closed loop progress.

Additional duties as assigned.

Nature of Supervision

Manages activities of individual contributors and/or indirectly guides Supervisor/Managers with accountability for multiple, large, high impact jobs or locations *Responsible for staffing activities. This person must be able to work independently and without direct supervision. Most direction will come from Senior Director of Animal Care Operations, or VP of Animal Care, Education and Merchandising, and Vice President of Veterinary Medicine.

Supervisory Responsibility

When organization is fully positioned, it will include the addition of 1 direct report- (Coordinator/Specialist, Animal Care Operations) + provides indirect supervision of ACOM's, MSO's and DGMs.

Education

Normally requires a bachelor's degree or equivalent, preferably in business or Animal Resources/Sciences, and/or a minimum of 5-7 years of experience in a related field.

Previous Experience

This candidate needs to possess a rare blend of high-level pet care, animal welfare, animal services and or supplies and well-being experience.

Multi-Site/Corporate Experience:Proven history of managing welfare or compliance programs across a decentralized, multi-unit network (e.g., retail chains, large shelter networks, or multiple distribution centers).

Supplier/Vendor Auditing:Experience auditing commercial animal breeders, vendors, or supply chains or manufacturers for ethical standards.

Deep, working knowledge of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), USDA regulations, and state-by-state variations in exotic and companion animal laws.

Previous services, animal care and business continuity experience, preferably in a pet retail environment, 3-5 years

Knowledge/experience in process management and risk management preferred.

Excellent computer skills including use of Microsoft Office business software and search engines.

Work Environment

Duties may include sitting for prolonged periods of time, observing functions upon a computer screen, conducting Zoom conference calls as well as conducting onsite audits, , field partners and leadership on a regular basis. Travel requirements: 10% unless otherwise required due to business conditions.

Contacts

The partner will work primarily with the Animal Care and Education team and directly with peripheral business leaders within pet services, veterinary medical, risk, safety, legal, regulatory, public relations, social media, customer escalations and with external business units such as Helmsman.