Senior Associate, Innovation & New Bets - Strategy & Operations

About the Team DoorDash Drive is our company’s hypergrowth fulfillment platform serving restaurants, grocers, and retailers across the United States and abroad. DoorDash Drive allows restaurants, grocers, and retailers to enable ecommerce fulfillment for their first-party experiences. About the Role We're bringing SaaS products to market for our merchant partners targeted at 1/ helping them build deep, rich relationships with their customers and 2/ surfacing their brand in the way that lands with potential customers — and we need someone who can help us bring these to market in a way that resonates and drives adoption. Example: A reputation management platform. Think of it as a merchant's central command center for understanding and acting on what their customers are saying and then helping them do something about it. Our products sit within the DoorDash Commerce Platform that serves enterprise restaurant brands, regional chains, and independent operators. You'll be working across multiple products at varying stages of maturity. You’re excited about this opportunity because... This is as much a strategy role as it is an operations role. Below are examples of the types of problems you'll be tasked with owning or supporting upon joining the team: Iterate the sales playbook and product positioning. Figure out what messaging lands with different merchant segments — enterprise chains, mid-market regionals, independents. Test it. Iterate. Scale it. Run competitive positioning. Map the landscape, build the case for why merchants should buy this over alternatives (or over doing nothing, which can sometimes be the more common competitor). Sell directly to merchants. This is a consultative sales motion. You'll be on calls with merchant decision-makers — marketers, operations leads, franchise business consultants — deeply understanding their workflows and goals to help them understand how these tools can solve their day to day problems and provide them with additional leverage. Onboard merchants. Design and run the onboarding experience. Figure out what drives high adoption and stickiness across different org structures. Shape the product. You're the closest person to the merchant. You'll feed quantitative data and qualitative feedback into the product roadmap. When operators tell you something, you'll ask 20 more questions to more deeply understand where they're coming from — and whether the product, the pitch, or both need to change. Work cross-functionally. Our closest team members are Product, Engineering, Analytics, and Sales — the right person for this role can get technical where needed (hello Claude Code!) and collaborate heavily with account owners to sell direct to Merchants. If you've ever thought - "I wish a job existed where I could build new products alongside Product/Eng, and engage directly with end customers" then you're in luck. We're excited about you because... You've brought a product to market before — or been close enough to the process that you know what it actually takes (not just the framework, the work) You're genuinely curious about the product. You'd ask for a demo before you started strategizing about go-to-market. You'd want to understand the problems a merchant is trying to solve before building a pitch deck. You can sell. Not "support the sales team" sell — actually get on a call with decision makers, understand their problems and objections and influence them. You're comfortable with ambiguity. These products are at different stages. Priorities shift. You'll need to manage context-switch between building a prototype, standing up a new merchant facing process and troubleshooting a merchant issue in the same afternoon. You use AI tools to give yourself leverage. You build workflows in Claude Code, automate analysis, and use AI to move faster than someone without those tools. This is how you operate day-to-day, not something you're "interested in exploring." You have a strong personality and build rapport easily. You can work with opinionated, direct stakeholders and hold your own without being combative. You'd rather go talk to an end customer than sit in a room theorizing about what they want. Preferred Qualifications Restaurant or food tech operators who've been close to the merchant experience SaaS go-to-market roles, especially at early-stage or growth-stage companies Startup operators who've worn multiple hats and built processes from scratch Consultants — but the kind who built things, not just advised on them Required Qualifications You've done some version of consultative selling — whether that was your title or not You have real product curiosity (you dig into how things work, not just how to position them) You can build and test a pricing or GTM hypothesis, not just present one You're fluent with AI tools (Claude Code, Cursor, similar) as part of your daily workflow You can write clearly, present persuasively, and hold a room with senior stakeholders You're comfortable spanning enterprise and SMB segments — different merchants, different motivations, different sales motions This Role Is NOT for You If... You need structure handed to you. There's no established playbook, no onboarding curriculum for the products, no "here's how we've always done it." You're more comfortable analyzing than doing. This role requires you to build things, sell things, and make decisions with incomplete information — not write recommendation decks. Your AI fluency means using ChatGPT to wordsmith emails and polish slide decks. We mean something different: using tools like Claude Code to build workflows, automate repetitive analysis, and give yourself operational leverage. If that distinction doesn't resonate, this isn't the right fit. You operate better on an island. The cross-functional partners here are smart and opinionated. You need to build trust and navigate these relationships both internally and externally. You want a clearly scoped lane. This is a Swiss-army-knife role across multiple products at different stages. If you want to go deep on one thing, this will frustrate you. We expect this position to be filled by 4/26/2026. Notice to Applicants for Jobs Located in NYC or Remote Jobs Associated With Office in NYC Only We use Covey as part of our hiring and/or promotional process for jobs in NYC and certain features may qualify it as an AEDT in NYC. As part of the hiring and/or promotion process, we provide Covey with job requirements and candidate submitted applications. We began using Covey Scout for Inbound from August 21, 2023, through December 21, 2023, and resumed using Covey Scout for Inbound again on June 29, 2024. The Covey tool has been reviewed by an independent auditor. Results of the audit may be viewed here: Covey Compensation The successful candidate’s starting pay will fall within the pay range listed below and is determined based on job-related factors including, but not limited to, skills, experience, qualifications, work location, and market conditions. Base salary is localized according to an employee’s work location. Ranges are market-dependent and may be modified in the future. In addition to base salary, the compensation for this role includes opportunities for equity grants. Talk to your recruiter for more information. DoorDash cares about you and your overall well-being. That’s why we offer a comprehensive benefits package to all regular employees, which includes a 401(k) plan with employer matching, 16 weeks of paid parental leave, wellness benefits, commuter benefits match, paid time off and paid sick leave in compliance with applicable laws (e.g. Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act). DoorDash also offers medical, dental, and vision benefits, 11 paid holidays, disability and basic life insurance, family-forming assistance, and a mental health program, among others. To learn more about our benefits, visit our careers page here . See below for paid time off details: For salaried roles: flexible paid time off/vacation, plus 80 hours of paid sick time per year. For hourly roles: vacation accrued at about 1 hour for every 25.97 hours worked (e.g. about 6.7 hours/month if working 40 hours/week; about 3.4 hours/month if working 20 hours/week), and paid sick time accrued at 1 hour for every 30 hours worked (e.g. about 5.8 hours/month if working 40 hours/week; about 2.9 hours/month if working 20 hours/week). The national base pay range for this position within the United States, including Illinois and Colorado. $87,000 — $128,000 USD About DoorDash At DoorDash, our mission to empower local economies shapes how our team members move quickly, learn, and reiterate in order to make impactful decisions that display empathy for our range of users—from Dashers to merchant partners to consumers. We are a technology and logistics company that started by enabling door-to-door delivery, and we are looking for team members who can help us go from a company that is known as the place you order food to a company that people turn to for any and all goods. DoorDash is growing rapidly and changing constantly, which gives our team members the opportunity to share their unique perspectives, solve new challenges, and own their careers. We're committed to supporting employees’ happiness, healthiness, and overall well-being by providing comprehensive benefits and perks including premium healthcare, wellness expense reimbursement, paid parental leave and more. Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion We’re committed to growing and empowering a more inclusive community within our company, industry, and cities. That’s why we hire and cultivate diverse teams of people from all backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. We believe that true innovation happens when everyone has room at the table and the tools, resources, and opportunity to excel. Statement of Non-Discrimination: In keeping with our beliefs and goals, no employee or applicant will face discrimination or harassment based on: race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, age, gender, marital/domestic partner status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability status, or veteran status. Above and beyond discrimination and harassment based on “protected categories,” we also strive to prevent other subtler forms of inappropriate behavior (i.e., stereotyping) from ever gaining a foothold in our office. Whether blatant or hidden, barriers to success have no place at DoorDash. We value a diverse workforce – people who identify as women, non-binary or gender non-conforming, LGBTQIA+, American Indian or Native Alaskan, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latinx, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, differently-abled, caretakers and parents, and veterans are strongly encouraged to apply. Thank you to the Level Playing Field Institute for this statement of non-discrimination. Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, and any other state or local hiring regulations, we will consider for employment any qualified applicant, including those with arrest and conviction records, in a manner consistent with the applicable regulation. If you need any accommodations, please inform your recruiting contact upon initial connection. Notice to Applicants for Jobs Located in NYC or Remote Jobs Associated With Office in NYC Only We used Covey as part of our hiring and/or promotional process for jobs in NYC and certain features may qualify it as an AEDT in NYC. As part of the hiring and/or promotion process, we provided Covey with job requirements and candidate submitted applications. We began using Covey Scout for Inbound from August 21, 2023, through December 21, 2023. We resumed using Covey Scout for Inbound again on June 29, 2024, and ceased using Covey Scout for Inbound on April 30, 2026. The Covey tool has been reviewed by an independent auditor. Results of the audit may be viewed here: https://getcovey.com/nyc-local-law-144 .