Director of Analytics
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Job Description
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As Director of Analytics, you will own the full path from raw data to decision: the data warehouse, the transformation layer, and the BI tooling analysts and the business actually touch. You will set the technical direction for the analytics stack, lead a small team of analysts and analytics engineers, and be the person executive stakeholders come to for a straight answer backed by solid numbers.
This is a hands-on leadership role. You will manage the team, but you are also expected to review models, dig into the warehouse yourself, and make the tooling calls, not just delegate them.
What We Are Looking For
- You are a rigorous thinker who treats data as evidence, not decoration, and holds your team to that same standard
- You have strong technical chops in SQL and the modern data stack (warehouse, transformation layer, BI layer), and you can go deep on any of them
- You have led or grown a team of analysts or analytics engineers, and you know how to hire, mentor, and set a bar
- You are comfortable owning ambiguous, open-ended problems, from 'what should we even be measuring' through to a shipped dashboard
- You communicate findings crisply to technical and non-technical audiences, including at the executive level
- You have opinions on BI tooling grounded in experience, not just familiarity, and can make a real build-vs-buy or migrate-vs-stay case
What You Will Be Doing
- Own the analytics architecture end to end, from the Snowflake warehouse and dbt transformation layer through to the BI/reporting layer used across the business
- Set and evolve BI tooling strategy, including evaluating whether our current tool, Sigma, remains the right fit versus alternatives like Looker, Tableau, Power BI, Hex, or Mode as the team and data volume grow
- Lead, hire, and develop a team of analysts and analytics engineers
- Partner with Product, Customer Success, and Engineering to define key metrics, build self-serve reporting, and translate business questions into well-scoped analytical work
- Establish data modeling standards, testing, and governance across dbt models so the numbers hold up under scrutiny
- Own data security and access controls across the warehouse and BI layer, ensuring sensitive retail, store, and operational data is properly governed, access is scoped by role, and we meet our customers' data handling requirements
- Build and own executive-facing reporting on core business metrics such as product availability, store performance, and inventory accuracy
Requirements
- 8+ years of experience in analytics, with at least 3 years directly managing or leading a team
- Deep hands-on SQL, including complex CTEs, window functions, and query optimization
- Real experience running a cloud data warehouse, Snowflake strongly preferred
- Hands-on experience with dbt or a comparable transformation layer
- Track record evaluating, migrating, or scaling BI tools, with the ability to speak concretely to tradeoffs between tools like Sigma, Looker, Tableau, and Power BI
- Experience translating messy operational data into decisions executives act on
- Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to influence cross-functional partners without authority
- Comfortable operating remote-first, across a distributed team
Nice to Have
- Experience with IoT, sensor, or computer-vision-derived data (high-volume, noisy, real-time)
- Python for analytics engineering or pipeline work
- Experience scaling an analytics function inside a growth-stage startup
- Background in retail, grocery, logistics, or other operationally complex environments
- Experience mentoring managers, not just individual contributors
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Focal Systems
View Company ProfileFocal Systems is a premier, enterprise-grade retail technology platform engineered to orchestrate massive-scale shelf intelligence and automated inventory operations for global grocers and big-box retailers. Operating as a high-velocity digital ecosystem, the company eliminates the massive operational friction of manual stock-taking by deploying an advanced network of AI-powered computer vision cameras directly onto store shelves. Moving beyond the rigid limitations of legacy ERP and point-of-sale systems, Focal Systems provides real-time, highly granular visibility into product availability, planogram compliance, and top-stock levels. Under the hood, their proprietary Shelf AI architecture processes millions of images daily, translating raw visual data into prioritized, actionable tasks for store associates through an intuitive mobile Action Tool, ensuring rapid replenishment and drastically reducing retail shrink. What sets Focal Systems apart is its uncompromising dedication to automated operational execution; by bridging the gap between deep-learning computer vision and frictionless workforce management, the platform empowers major retail chains to dramatically accelerate labor productivity, recoup lost sales, and optimize the end-to-end consumer experience.
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