LEAD VETERINARY TECHNICIAN (CVT/LVT)
For the technician who's tired of knowing the answer and still having to ask.
AT A GLANCE
$30/hr base + benefits. Monday-Friday, 8-5. Coral Springs, FL. Reports directly to the owner. CVT/LVT with 3+ years, no new graduates. One position. AI used daily.
IF THIS SOUNDS FAMILIAR
You've been credentialed for years. You can run anesthesia in your sleep, you catch the thing the doctor walked past, and you've calmed more clients on the phone than anyone in the building. And you still have to ask permission to reschedule a recheck. Your judgment is used when it's convenient and overruled when it isn't. Nobody wrote down what you're allowed to decide, so every decision is a risk and every good call is invisible.
We know this because we measured the other side of it. Over 13 working days our doctor was interrupted 465 times, once every 10 minutes, mostly by questions a technician like you answers without thinking. A drug dose was asked five times in one day. That's not a technician problem. That's a hospital that never gave its technician authority. We've spent the last three months writing that authority down, and we're hiring the person it belongs to.
Our rule: if a task needs a DVM, it belongs to the doctor. If it doesn't, it shouldn't wait on the doctor. You're the person who makes that true.
WHAT 90 DAYS IN LOOKS LIKE
The team brings clinical questions to you first, and most of them stop there. You've put your name on a dozen protocols that didn't exist before you. The oral disease you flagged at vitals has turned into recommendations in the record with your name on the finding. The dog whose fractured tooth you saw at a nail trim is out of pain, and the protocol you wrote will still be working after you've moved on. The doctor is in surgery more and in the hallway less, and you'll see the number every week because we measure it: baseline is 5.6 interruptions an hour. You won't be the only reason it moves, but you'll be a big part of why, and you'll have the authority to make it move. That's the job working.
WHAT YOU'LL OWN
In this order when things collide: patient safety, then anything the doctor is waiting on, then scheduled patient care, then follow-up and paperwork. We protect blocks for the last two so this job doesn't become interruption by another name. You won't be building every system at once. The first 90 days have a defined sequence, and you and the owner set priorities weekly. No two days here look the same. Surgery days, visiting-surgeon days, clinic days, and the week the CT arrives are all different jobs, and you'll do all of them.
The decisions. Written decision rights, with dollar and risk thresholds, will exist before your first day: what you decide alone, what you decide and tell him after, and what you bring to him first. Recheck intervals, bandage changes, supply reorders under a set amount, whether a drop-off gets worked now or at two. The job is to decide, not to ask "are you okay with that?" And when those rights change, they change in writing, in a meeting, with a date. Not in a hallway.
The clinical questions. Medication doses and administration, post-op and recovery calls, pre-op validity windows, fluid rates, bandaging, which test code, anesthesia-readiness checks. You know most of this already, and you handle it within written protocols. Anything that needs a diagnosis, a prescribing decision, or a deviation from protocol goes to the doctor with your recommendation attached. Where the answer is specific to this hospital, you help write it down once so it's never asked twice.
The mouth. Every patient whose vitals you take gets an oral look while you check mucous membranes: tartar, gingivitis, fractured teeth, resorption, odor, pain. You note it, photograph it, and flag it for the doctor before he enters the room. Oral disease we catch at vitals gets a recommendation, not a "let's keep an eye on it."
Anesthesia and the surgical day. Plan, induce, monitor, recover, and log, for Dr. Lera's procedures and alongside our visiting oral and general surgeons. Controlled-substance logs. The dental CT workflow once it's installed. You confirm clinical readiness for surgery; the front desk owns the calendar.
Estimates. We run on canned estimates in ezyVet and we're building out more; you'll help build them, and you'll be able to put together any treatment plan from the doctor's recap when a canned one doesn't fit. After a supervised first month you present the routine cases that meet our written handoff criteria. Larger cases the doctor presents, and when he knows a client is ready to move forward he may hand those to you too. Insurance verification and paperwork stay with the front desk.
The conversations that repeat. Intake, discharge, post-op instructions, clinical callbacks including the simpler lab results, and the education talks we give weekly (CCL and TPLO, vaccine reactions, diet trials, Adequan), delivered from approved scripts you help write. The doctor talks to clients about diagnosis and recommendations. You talk to them about everything else.
The record. Our AI scribe runs on the exam-room desktop, your phone, or a tablet. Every tech appointment documented and charged, every clinical photo attached, every scribe note checked against what was actually done. The record has to be the thing the team trusts, and that's yours.
The floor. Rooms ready before he walks in. Structured intake and a 30-second "room ready" handoff. Tech appointments: laser and shockwave sessions, Cytopoint and Adequan injections, Lump & Bump screening, Stance plate mobility evaluations (an objective weight-bearing measurement we take before and after treatment), rechecks, and sample collection including blood draws and redraws. You'll join a small, experienced team that includes a long-tenured hospital assistant with deep client and visiting-surgeon knowledge. You bring credentialed clinical leadership and set the standard for technician work; the practice manager runs staffing and the schedule. This is a hospital where you'll know the patients by name across years, not by chart number, and where you'll work beside the owner every day instead of through layers.
WHO WE ARE
Heron Lakes has served Coral Springs since 2005; Dr. Lera has owned and led it since 2013. We're a boutique, concierge small-animal hospital, and our clients expect more time, more explanation, and more follow-through than a volume practice gives. We're built for advanced work most general practices refer out: oral surgery including root canals and hemimandibulectomy, TPLO and orthopedics, arthroscopy and endoscopy, and regenerative medicine (PRP, shockwave, therapeutic laser). Visiting surgeons operate here on regular days, experts in general surgery and oral surgery, and a radiologist reads our imaging. Thermal mass screening (VISTA iQ) is live and a cone-beam CT arrives November 2026.
WHAT YOU'LL GET TO PRACTICE
Medicine with a different default. We think unchecked inflammation sits underneath a lot of what walks through the door, so we try to find the underlying problem and lower that load instead of putting a band-aid on symptoms. We test before we treat. When drugs are needed we use fewer of them, at lower doses, less often, titrate down to the lowest dose that still works, and reassess. We're conservative on vaccines and we talk to clients about real food. You don't have to arrive agreeing with all of it. You do have to be curious about why we do it, follow the protocols consistently, and explain them to clients without apologizing for them.
HOW WE WORK
AI is part of how this hospital runs, not a gimmick. The doctor uses it every day: scribing, client follow-up drafts, research, the Answer Book the team works from. You'll use it too. If you already use AI regularly in your own life, you'll move fast here. If you've never tried it, this isn't the place to start.
We also change what isn't working. We're not sentimental about a protocol that stopped serving the patient. But we don't change things in the hallway: a new program runs as written for a set window, long enough for the results to tell us something real, then gets reviewed with data and adjusted in writing. You'll always know which version is current.
WHAT THIS JOB IS NOT
Not the practice manager, not front desk, not insurance paperwork, not a commission job. We will never pay you for unnecessary medicine or pressure-based selling.
WHERE THIS GOES
This role is built to grow. You'll be here when the CT goes live and the oral-surgery program scales, and the person who owns the clinical floor well is the first person we look to when we add responsibility. Pay follows capability. If you want a job that stays the same size, this isn't it. If you've been the person everyone comes to and nobody promoted, you already know what another year of that costs. We should talk.
COMPENSATION
$30/hr base. 60% of health premium, 2 weeks PTO, 7 paid holidays, $500 CE plus paid learning time, scrubs, employee pet-care discounts. After your first 90 days, a quarterly bonus of up to $1,000, scored on follow-ups closed inside the required window, tech appointments properly documented and charged, and clinical-protocol compliance. It is never tied to revenue pressure or to anything you can't control.
HOW THIS GOES
We run the same structured process for every candidate, so you're compared on the job and not on who interviewed well on a good day. It starts with a short phone screen built on real questions from our interruption log, moves to structured interviews and a paid working session in the building using real scenarios from our own hospital with names removed, and includes reference checks. The offer comes with your written decision rights attached, so you'll know what you can decide alone before you've worked a day.
TO APPLY
Resume plus a short note answering two questions. One: tell us about a case where you caught something the doctor hadn't seen yet. Two: what's one recurring problem in a hospital you'd take ownership of without being asked? Send to regan.z@strategyvet.com.
