Careers at WakeWater

A senior, hands-on leadership role for someone who knows how to build brands, not simply manage them. You'll own WakeWater's brand and marketing strategy, and be responsible for turning that strategy into programs that drive awareness, trial, community and sales.

You'll lead strategy and execution across brand positioning, creative direction, retail and shopper marketing, community, partnerships, influencer programs, product launches and the marketing calendar, working closely with the founders, sales, e-commerce and external partners.

WakeWater operates across national retail, Costco, Amazon and DTC, so we're looking for someone who understands how to build one cohesive consumer brand across multiple channels. Our CEO currently leads DTC, Amazon and performance marketing, and you'll work closely together to connect brand-building to commercial outcomes.

This isn't a role where you inherit a large department or manage agencies. You'll set the strategy, build the team, find the opportunities and get involved in execution. One day you're developing the annual brand plan, the next you're working a national retail launch, approving creative, building a partnership or helping bring a new product to market.

What you'll own

• Overall brand and marketing strategy, and the annual plan, calendar and budget
• Brand positioning, messaging and creative direction
• Retail, shopper and Costco marketing programs
• Community marketing, events and experiential activations
• Influencer, ambassador and creator strategy, and brand partnerships
• Organic social and content strategy
• New product positioning and go-to-market planning
• Marketing KPIs, measurement and ROI
• Development and leadership of the internal marketing team

Who you are

• 5+ years in brand marketing for consumer products, with at least 2 years at a startup or challenger brand
• You've helped build a brand, not just maintain one, and can turn strategy into execution without large teams or agency budgets
• Experience leading community, influencer, ambassador and partnership marketing
• Strong creative judgement, with a portfolio of work you directed and can walk us through
• Experience managing people and a budget, and making calls with incomplete information
• Comfortable using data from Shopify, Amazon, Meta, Google, retail sell-through and consumer research to make brand decisions
• A bias for doing. You'll write the brief, and sometimes build the deck and pack the event kit too

Bonus points: functional beverage, RTD or energy drink experience; direct experience with Costco or club, including rotations, launches, sampling and roadshows; brand training at a large CPG company followed by time somewhere scrappier; experience at a CPG or beverage brand that scaled from roughly $5M to $50M+; relationships in the Canadian fitness, wellness, retail or creator ecosystem.

We've scaled to eight figures in three years on the strength of a small team moving quickly. The next stage is about predicting and controlling that growth rather than chasing it, so we know what we'll need, when, and at what cost, well before anyone has to ask.

This fall we're implementing a full ERP and inventory system of record: lot-level traceability, BOM and production management, purchasing, EDI, and a live two-way sync into QuickBooks. You are not being hired to build a planning system out of spreadsheets. That's bought and being implemented. You're being hired to run it properly, make it tell the truth, and build the planning layer that sits on top of it.

That layer is forecasting. Our sales forecast arrives by customer and product line; turning it into SKU-level monthly demand, and then into a production and materials plan, is currently judgment rather than a system. Building that is the part of the job you won't inherit, and you'd be doing it with a real platform underneath you and an engineering team shipping weekly, rather than alone in Excel.

You'll work alongside our distribution and manufacturing owner, who holds the co-manufacturer and 3PL relationships and runs execution. The line between you is simple: you decide what should happen and by when; they make it happen. It's hands-on work on both sides. You'll build the plan and also chase the pallet.

What you'll own

Demand planning. The monthly demand plan: sales forecast converted to SKU-level demand, and the assumptions behind that conversion. Forecast accuracy, and closing the loop back into planning. Channel-level demand logic across club, grocery, convenience, e-commerce and D2C.

Production planning. The production schedule across can and powder lines and multiple co-manufacturers: what runs, when and in what quantity. Run sizing, timing and output reconciliation against plan. Backward critical path scheduling for major retail rotations, held to date.

Materials and purchasing. BOM explosion to raw material requirements, netted against on-hand and open POs. Supplier terms, MOQs, reorder points and the open-PO position. Inbound raw material freight into our co-manufacturers. Purchase price variance and landed cost accuracy.

Inventory. The national inventory position and available-to-promise: how much we hold, where it should sit, and when it needs to move. Aged stock and expiry exposure, flagged early enough to act on. The integrity of planning data inside the ERP.

Measurement. The operational scorecard: forecast accuracy, fill rate, inventory accuracy, purchase price variance and turns. You build and publish it.

Who you are

• 3 to 6 years in demand planning, supply planning, production planning or procurement, ideally in food, beverage, supplements or another physical-product business that uses co-manufacturing
• Real fluency with lead times, MOQs, BOMs and safety stock. You can explain why a four-week ingredient lead time means ordering eight weeks out without looking it up
• Rigour about data. The instinct to chase a variance rather than accept it is the single most important trait for this role
• Advanced Excel or Sheets, modelling rather than formatting
• Comfort making calls with incomplete information, and the judgment to know which gaps matter
• A bias for doing. You'll build the plan, and some weeks you'll also be the one chasing a delivery date on a Friday afternoon

Bonus points: you've implemented or operated an ERP and have opinions about what makes them fail; you've been the first planner somewhere; you use modern tools such as LLMs, SQL, Power Query and low-code automation to answer questions faster than the person next to you; experience with Costco or club channel, EDI, QuickBooks, Amazon Seller Central, or Canadian retail.