Catalog Manager (Player-Coach) (Chicago)

About the Company

Hoodie Analytics supports cannabis brands, consumers, and retailers with a comprehensive suite of analytics, apps, and data-enabled services that provide marketplace intelligence on sales, distribution, price, and promotion. Data is at the core of our business; we maintain the largest database of cannabis activity, held to the highest standards of quality and accuracy.

About the Role

We are looking for a hands-on Catalog Manager to lead our Catalog team of junior analysts. This is a player-coach role: you will carry your own portfolio of analyst work while also setting the standard for quality, process, and team performance. The Catalog Manager is responsible for the operational health of the team: coaching analysts, tracking quality metrics, and surfacing process inefficiencies. You will work closely with the Catalog Technical Lead, who serves as the bridge between the Catalog team and Data Engineering, to translate your operational observations into actionable requirements for tooling and workflow improvements. You do not need to build the tools, but you do need to know how to use them, evaluate them, and communicate clearly about what is and is not working.

Responsibilities

Team Leadership & Coaching

• Manage a team of catalog analysts: set clear performance objectives, monitor daily work output, and provide regular coaching and developmental feedback
• Foster a culture of accuracy, consistency, and continuous improvement
• Onboard new analysts and maintain training materials that reflect current tools and best practices
• Identify skill gaps on the team and create opportunities for growth

Quality & Performance

• Define and implement KPIs for catalog team output: accuracy rates, throughput, error rates, and enrichment completeness
• Build and maintain reports and dashboards that give the team and company visibility into data quality across dispensary and product work
• Conduct routine data quality audits and establish escalation paths for recurring discrepancies
• Document team workflows and best practices, keeping them current as processes evolve

Process & Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Use your day-to-day operational experience to identify inefficiencies in current catalog workflows and tooling: and communicate those findings clearly to the Catalog Technical Lead
• Partner with the Technical Lead to develop requirements for workflow improvements and tool enhancements; you define the 'what and why,' the Technical Lead handles the 'how'
• Coordinate with the Product and Data Engineering teams (via the Technical Lead) to incorporate new data enrichment needs into catalog processes
• Present team performance results and process improvement proposals to internal stakeholders; receive feedback with openness and flexibility

Individual Contributor Work

• Maintain your own active portfolio of dispensary and/or brand catalog work at a high level of accuracy and enrichment
• Model the quality standards and attention to detail you expect from the team
• Stay current with cannabis product categories, market trends, and data sources relevant to catalog quality

Qualifications

Must-Have Skills

• 6-10 years experience in data analysis
• 2-5 years managing a team
• Prior experience in the cannabis industry, especially with product knowledge and familiarity with product categories
• Demonstrated experience cleaning, standardizing, and QA-ing large datasets: able to spot patterns and inefficiencies quickly
• Strong Excel and Google Sheets skills
• Proficient in SQL: comfortable querying data to audit quality and investigate discrepancies (you don't need to build pipelines, but you need to pull and interpret data)
• Experience using internal tools and dashboards to monitor team output and data quality; able to learn new tools quickly
• Advanced written and verbal communication skills: able to clearly document processes, write requirements, and present findings to non-technical stakeholders
• High attention to detail combined with an operational mindset: you can zoom in on a data problem and zoom out to see how it affects the broader workflow
• Prior people management or mentorship experience

Nice-to-Have Skills

• Experience working with product or inventory data in a retail, wholesale, or SaaS environment
• Familiarity with data flow diagrams or basic Python (ability to read, not necessarily write)
• Background in data quality governance frameworks or documentation
• Experience collaborating with data engineering or product teams on workflow tooling

Compensation package

What We Offer

• Comprehensive benefits package including 401k, health, and dental insurance
• Flexible work arrangements
• A collaborative, innovative work environment that values professional growth
• Opportunities to work on cutting-edge technologies and products that make a difference in the cannabis industry

Equal Opportunity Statement

We are committed to diversity and inclusivity.