VP R&D

Why TREAT?

TREAT is a gaming startup in hyper-growth, revolutionizing the industry with our Play to Impact Real Lives model. Through gamification, TREAT enables pet lovers to take care for real animals in need - like a real-life “Tamagotchi”. With over 50 million annual meals, treats, and toys earned to shelter animals, TREAT is making a significant difference.

Our vision: Entertain millions while impacting millions of lives.

Who are we looking for?

We're looking for an experienced and resilient VP R&D to take full ownership of our technology organization and lead the entire R&D department. This person will lead the backend architecture, engineering team, and technical roadmap, while being a hands-on partner to the CEO and product leadership. The ideal candidate has deep backend expertise, has led R&D teams in the gaming industry, and thrives on tackling complex, long-term technical challenges - including modernizing legacy systems and scaling our infrastructure to support rapid growth. We're looking for someone mentally resilient, assertive, and committed to seeing initiatives through from start to finish.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the entire R&D department, owning the company's full technical strategy, architecture, and roadmap

• Lead, mentor, and grow the backend engineering team

• Evaluate and lead potential database migrations and infrastructure upgrades

• Partner closely with the CEO and product leadership on technical decision-making and prioritization

• Improve development velocity, engineering processes, and delivery predictability

• Build and scale analytics and BI capabilities across the organization

• Ensure the reliability, security, and scalability of production systems

• Take an active role in hiring and building out the R&D team as the company grows

Requirements:

Must Have

• Strong hands-on experience with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) - 2+ years (critical requirement)

• Very strong backend architecture background - 10+ years (critical requirement)

• VP R&D / Director-level experience in the gaming industry - 3+ years (critical requirement)

• Java - 4+ years

• Mentally resilient executive who thrives under pressure, embraces difficult challenges, and is committed to seeing long-term initiatives through to completion

• Proven ability to lead and grow engineering teams

• Excellent communication skills and comfortable working closely with executive leadership

• Full proficiency in English (spoken and written)

Nice to Have

• Experience with Unity

• DevOps / Cloud Infrastructure experience

• Experience with MongoDB

If you're passionate about building resilient, scalable technology and taking ownership of a growing R&D organization, we'd love to hear from you.