Hours: Full Time (40 hrs/week), on site, flexible hours possibleDepartment: Technology & EngineeringReports to: CEO
Chief Technology Officer (CTO)About UsDandelion Chocolate is a bean-to-bar chocolate factory in San Francisco’s Mission District. We make chocolate using just two ingredients—cocoa beans and cane sugar—and travel to origins as often as we can to build long-term, trust-based relationships with the producers who grow and ferment our beans. Our chocolate is crafted with an uncompromising commitment to quality, transparency, and sustainability.For such a small company, our operations are delightfully complex, spanning global sourcing, online fulfillment, retail cafés, multiple chocolate factories, and a vibrant online community of guests and partners. This role will be the architect and champion of the technology that underpins our growth, efficiency, and digital experience. From optimizing our e-commerce platform to innovating on our internal production tools, you will build and refine the digital systems that empower our teams, delight our guests, and promote ethical sourcing, transparency, and long-term partnerships.
About the RoleWorking directly with Todd (our CEO), this role is responsible for envisioning, architecting, and executing the technology that will shape our next chapter of growth. Our transition from a brick-and-mortar factory to a thriving online business accelerated during COVID, and today, our e-commerce platform outpaces our retail locations in revenue. Our team is small but ambitious, and we are seeking a systems-minded leader who can balance long-term infrastructure planning with hands-on problem-solving.
While our chocolate equipment is what we talk about most, you’ll be responsible for an equally impressive undercurrent of technical systems that range from lot tracking, our online store, our data warehouse, dashboards, internal tools, ad hoc scripts, to researching new systems. While we have a strong foundation, you’ll be making key decisions about what types of systems we use that will impact Dandelion Chocolate for decades to come.
Our tech-forward culture has already experimented with robotic dishwashers, machine learning-powered cocoa bean sorting, and custom supply chain tracking. Our Web/ Digital Growth team (Web Dev, UI/UX, QA, Creative) handles the day-to-day product launches, manual/automated QA, and newsletters allowing you to focus on the tools and technology that we'll need in 12-18 months to continue our momentum. Currently we use a number of different tools, platforms, and languages including Shopify/Liquid, HTML/CSS/Javascript, Playwright, Wordpress, Github, Looker, Fivetran, Airbyte, DBT, Airtable, Python, PHP, and lots of homegrown scripts.
We are looking for someone who thrives on innovation but also values simplicity, maintainability, and usability. You will build and refine the tools that support our digital storefront, fulfillment operations, chocolate production, and data warehousing. This means tackling projects like:
- Designing and implementing a more robust A/B testing engine.
- Improving fulfillment workflows, invoice printing, and data integration.
- Optimizing e-commerce performance and caching strategies.
- Ensuring our data infrastructure supports better decision-making across the company.
- Exploring emerging technologies to enhance both operational efficiency and guest experiences.
A Day in the LifeNo matter the month or day, our eye is always on November and December, the make-or-break holiday season when nearly half of our online business is compressed into just 4-6 weeks. Your Monday starts with reading the automated QA report of spotted bugs, reviewing the Web team’s product launch schedule (two new origins, two new recipes, and a newsletter), and then you turn to the small queue of bugs reported last week that need attention: a Wordpress security update, the Web team has an issue with their web fonts, Guest Care reported that some items marked for pickup only are still available in Canada.
With the small-yet-urgent issues cleared, you pivot to holiday season preparation, just 4-5 months away: Fulfillment team needs a better invoice printing platform, this yearʻs Advent Calendar includes an automated Shopify address-validation system, and our data warehouse needs to integrate smoothly with both Quickbooks and our Airtable Master Product database where we input tasting notes, awards, and other product-specific information. You are the primary architect, engineer, and tester for most of these projects and our goal isnʻt just to maintain this year’s holiday rush but to lay the groundwork for the next three to five years of growth.
About YouYou are a strategic, hands-on engineer with an eye for long-term impact and a deep appreciation for craftsmanship—whether in code or in chocolate. You understand that great technology isn’t just about writing code; it’s about building systems that enable others to do their best work.
We know you have options, but this is a rare opportunity to shape the technology behind an enduring chocolate company—one built to last for generations. We’re also flexible. If you dream of sailing around the world in the summer while tackling exciting chocolate projects the rest of the year, we can likely make that work. If you want to spend one day a week hands-on in the chocolate factory while the rest of your time is spent on digital strategy, we’re open to that too.
For the right person—someone with entrepreneurial spirit, unwavering integrity, and a collaborative, can-do attitude—this role offers the chance to build something truly special.
Your Day-to-Day Entails:Technology Strategy & Execution: As a leader, you know when to invest in major technological leaps—whether in automation, AI-enhanced production tracking, or a next-generation e-commerce experience—and when an iterative approach makes more sense. You ensure that the technology we build today serves our needs not just for this holiday season, but for the next five years including:
- Architect and implement the technology that fuels Dandelion Chocolate’s growth, efficiency, and guest experience and will lay the technical foundation for the next 3-5 years of growth.
- Make strategic decisions on major technological investments, balancing automation, AI-enhanced production tracking, and next-generation e-commerce experiences.
- Annually identify and support 3-4 major organizational initiatives (e.g., fulfillment optimization, new tool development, product launches, equipment upgrades).
- Recommend proactive projects aligned with organizational goals (e.g. upgrading Shopify theme) so that the right tools and systems are in place to support e-commerce, fulfillment, production, and digital engagement. Develop a 6-12+ month technology roadmap that balances stability, scalability, and innovation.
- This is a senior, yet hands-on role: approximately 70-80% coding, 10% architecture, and 20% digital strategy.
Systems Architecture & Development: You are hands-on in building and refining the core digital systems that keep Dandelion running. Some of the key projects in your first year might include:- Optimize e-commerce platform performance, caching, and A/B testing capabilities.
- Automate fulfillment processes such as invoice printing, shipping label generation, and address validation.
- Enhance data infrastructure, integrating inventory, tasting notes, awards, and other product details across Shopify, Airtable, and Looker.
- Develop internal tools to improve visibility and decision-making, including real-time production dashboards and guest experience insights.
- Ensure site reliability, particularly during peak holiday seasons, by stress-testing infrastructure and proactively addressing security vulnerabilities.
- Serve as the primary architect, engineer, and problem-solver, ensuring system flexibility and thorough documentation for future development.
- Quickly assess team operations, research industry best practices, and develop scalable solutions.
- Build and maintain tools, frameworks, and dashboards to ensure access to timely, accurate, and actionable data company-wide.
Collaboration & Cross-Functional Leadership: You ensure that stakeholders and teams have the tools and data they need to do their best work—whether that’s helping Fulfillment print invoices faster, giving Guest Care better insights into order histories, or providing Marketing with better analytics on campaign performance. Beyond just responding to requests, you anticipate pain points and opportunities to enhance efficiency. Your approach is collaborative, pragmatic, and solution-oriented—you know when to dig in and solve a problem yourself and when to empower others with the right tools and knowledge.- Work closely with Web/Growth, Fulfillment, Guest Care, and Chocolate Production teams to align technology with business needs.
- Provide tools and data to stakeholders, enhancing efficiency in fulfillment, guest care, and marketing analytics.
- Proactively identify pain points and opportunities for process improvements.
- Take a collaborative, pragmatic, and solution-oriented approach, knowing when to solve a problem directly and when to empower others.
Data & Analytics: Develop and maintain clean, actionable data infrastructure that allows teams to track performance, optimize processes, and make data-driven decisions including:- Create real-time dashboards and reports tracking operational efficiency, sales performance, and fulfillment accuracy.
- Develop automated data pipelines to minimize manual reporting efforts.
- Ensure data integrity and consistency across systems.
- Provide accessible data for all team members, from the CEO to café baristas, to improve operational efficiency.
I.T. and Ops: We currently work with a third-party vendor to commission new computers and iPads. Review their work and make recommendations when appropriate including:- Oversee Dandelion’s network infrastructure and I.T. strategy.
- Manage relationships with third-party vendors for computer and iPad commissioning.
- Review vendor work and provide recommendations for improvement.
Ally to CEO & Exec Team: As a trusted thought partner to the CEO and exec team, you translate technical capabilities into business impact, helping shape the company’s strategic direction. As a proven senior leader, you know what it feels like to be juggling many initiatives simultaneously and have the maturity to know how to work with others to be helpful.- Be a positive, accessible role model and leader for the organization, upholding our values of kindness, humility, and craftmanship. You can maintain confidences, have through-and-through integrity, meet people where they are, and value team members of all backgrounds and skillsets. We wouldn’t ask team members to do work that we wouldn’t feel comfortable doing ourselves. Spending a day making chocolate, learning how to pull a shot, or being trained on proper bow-tying technique is a tradition for team members of all levels.
Other Responsibilities as Necessary: Other teams can depend upon you to step in and up as needed—whether that’s troubleshooting a site outage, helping with a last-minute holiday system update, or brainstorming new ways to connect our online and in-person experiences. Many of our exec team members have pitched in to help Fulfillment during a busy week, volunteered to help the retail team with a market pop-up, or to volunteered for an SF-Marin food bank.- Provide introductions to trusted talent, tools, and connections in your network as it makes sense for the organization.
- Occasional travel required for vendor meetings, technology partnerships, or coordination with teams in Japan.
Requirements:
- Technical: Deep knowledge of html/css/javascript and deep coding knowledge. Specific language is not as important as the ability to work across different codebases, languages, and tools.
- Experience. You have 5+ years in a deeply technical role. You have seen organizations scale and can predict the obstacles to come in 4-7+ years.
- Actual Coding: Deeply proficient in a number of programming languages (e.g. C/C++/JS/Perl/Python/PHP/etc)
- Competence in modern tools, e.g. Github, Docker, Cursor, etc.
- Expert network. You’re not afraid to say you don’t have an answer. However, you have a robust network of trusted experts that you can turn to when you reach a dead end which includes contractors, specialists, and vendors.
- Soft skills. We have a uniquely collaborative and thoughtful culture. If you thrive in an environment that values active listening and servant leadership, you'll find this a great fit.
- Our culture is a positive, can-do, servant-oriented culture that takes active listening to an entirely new level. You can eloquently distill and communicate complex topics broadly to the exec team, individual team members, and everyone in-between.
- Self-starter. Many of the systems & processes that we need have yet to be built. Our ideal candidate has no problem rolling up their sleeves and pitching in initially. We're looking for someone who's flexible, nimble, doesn't have an ego and is ok with getting deeply into the details … and with a positive outlook as well!
- An eye for detail: we're particular about whether fonts have the right line-height, maintain a consistent color scheme across pages, and we notice when copy includes double dashes instead of hyphens.
- Teamwork: Previous experience working in a team-oriented engineering environment with deadlines.
- Bonus: Experience with UI/UX, information hierarchy, typography, film or video editing is also extraordinarily helpful! If you have a love of details and thoughtful experiences, this will be an exceptionally good fit.
BenefitsThe benefits and perks continue beyond a robust chocolate education. Dandelion Chocolate invests in our people and culture. All team members receive medical, vision, and dental benefits as well as the option to enroll in our 401k program, paid vacation time, holiday pay, and paid sick time. In addition, our team members enjoy commuter benefits, FSAs, local gym discounts, chocolate tasting opportunities, the chance to travel to origin and our Japan locations, and a range of opportunities to grow and develop within the company.
How to ApplyIf you are interested in applying, please email your resume and a cover letter to jobs@dandelionchocolate.com. In your cover letter, please include a couple of sentences about the best team you’ve worked with and why it worked so well.
Powered by JazzHR
pM9hEM3Q9Q
