Venture and Growth Lead

At Pet Circle, we believe pets deserve the very best, and the people who love them deserve a better way to care for them. Since 2011, we've grown from that single idea into Australia's biggest online pet retailer, with around 700 Pet Circlers across Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines, reshaping how pet parents discover, choose and receive what their pets need.

Pet care is a $15 billion industry in Australia, and as pet ownership continues to grow, so do the expectations of modern pet parents. They want expert advice, personalised experiences, convenience and reliability, all delivered seamlessly. That's where we come in. We're building the future of pet care through technology, innovation and a deep understanding of what pets and their people need. It's a big opportunity, and we're only just scratching the surface.

The role

Ventures exists to take what Pet Circle knows about pet parents and their pets, fifteen years of relationships, data and trust that almost nobody else in this market has, and turn it into ever more, and ever better, ways to serve them across the whole of a pet’s life. Not just what they buy, but how they care.

We build real businesses from the ground up. Pharmacy, Bonnodog and Insurance are live today, at very different stages of their journeys, and more will follow. Some of what comes next will look nothing like retail.

As Venture Lead you’ll work across that whole portfolio. Depending on where the need is, you might put growth and pace behind a venture that has proven its model but not yet found scale, go deep on one we haven’t yet given the attention it deserves, run the screening process that tells us which new opportunities are genuinely worth backing, or take operating ownership of a venture outright. What stays constant is the mandate: understand the opportunity, prove it with real customers, and build it.

Ventures is where we build authentic enterprises from the ground up, and we do it in an AI-native way. Not just using AI to speed up research and surface insight, but using it to change what a small team can actually put in front of a customer, and how quickly.

What you’ll be working on

• Get close to customers, through research, data and direct conversations, to stress-test whether an idea solves a real problem rather than whether it looks good on paper. Walking in the shoes of a customer every day is crucial to building the right solutions.

• Run the screening process: a deliberate, active read of where the real opportunities are, in the market, with customers, with competitors, and in what is already being proven in the US, the UK and elsewhere

• Build the commercial case for the opportunities worth backing, including the P&L, key milestones and the customer evidence behind them, through to a clear go, reshape or park recommendation

• Go after a backed opportunity in a dedicated way: take it from decision through to something real in market, rather than handing over a recommendation and moving on

• Work across category, marketing, data, technology, CX, supply chain and the vet team without formal authority, and feed what you learn back into the core business

• Put growth and pace behind a venture that has proven its model but hasn’t yet found scale

• Take operating ownership of a venture when that’s where the need is: a live P&L, a team and a customer base, not an advisory seat beside one

What we're looking for

• You know customers first-hand. You’ve worked where the customer is the actual counterparty, not adjacent to it, and you can tell us what customers really do rather than what a segmentation deck says they do. This matters to us more than anything else on this page

• Sharp commercial judgement. You’ve owned a P&L, or built the case for one and then lived with the result, and you know when to park an idea rather than push it

• You operate, you don’t advise. You’ve shipped end to end in e-commerce or digital product, and you could run one of our ventures if that’s where you were pointed: the team, the budget, the weekly numbers

• You move without waiting. You build trust quickly across functions you have no authority over, you’re comfortable with incomplete information, and you’d rather be pointed at what matters most this quarter than hold a fixed patch

• You’ve built with AI yourself. Not frameworks or consulting exposure, but the thing you actually built: a prototype, an internal tool, a working MVP, with Claude Code or an equivalent, and what happened when a real customer used it. Not a requirement, and the single biggest accelerant in this role

• Also valuable: taking something from nothing to a real business inside a larger organisation; familiarity with pet or an adjacent category such as vet care, pharmacy, insurance or nutrition; a habit of tracking what is being proven in other markets

Where you'll work

This is a Sydney-based role. Our office sits on top of Wynyard station, it's pet-friendly (of course). Our teams collaborate best and are most effective when together in the office but we work flexibly based on team needs. We believe spending time together in person is important for building strong relationships, collaborating effectively, moving quickly as a team, and having fun!

A few good things

• Heaps of development opportunities - lunch & learns, secondments & unlimited learning courses via Go1

• Flexible working environment

• Up to 50% employee discount

• Product sample giveaways

• Pawrental leave

• Volunteer days for the causes you care about

• Fitness corporate partnership

Why you'll want in

Looking after pets, and the pet parents who love them, is what gets us out of bed. That energy carries into how we work, and into what your days here would feel like.

You'll own your patch and have the room to act on it. We move fast and decide fast, and we'd rather test an idea and learn from it than sit on it. You'll have rich, real-time data at your fingertips to back your thinking, and the freedom to chase an opportunity the moment you spot one. The best idea wins, wherever it comes from.

What holds it together is what we stand for:

• We're better together

• We operate with humble hearts and hungry minds

• Pets matter, so pets and pet parents always have a seat at our table

• We're instinctively curious. Always

Everyone (& their pets) Welcome

We're better when we don't all think the same. Different backgrounds, perspectives and experiences make our work sharper and our days more interesting, so whoever you are, if this role excites you we'd love to hear from you, even if you don't tick every box. And if you need anything adjusted in the process to do your best, just say the word, we're happy to help.