The posting
Cole Haan became an independently owned company again in 2013 and is growing rapidly in the US and abroad. We have earned a unique leadership position in the marketplace as a pioneer of goods that are as functional and versatile as they are crafted—most notably through our ZerøGrand and GrandSeries products. We are reinventing the world of modern footwear, handbags and accessories for consumers who seek style, versatility, and innovative comfortable function in their products.
The company’s worldwide headquarters is in Greenland, NH, with offices in New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, London, Amsterdam, Dubai and sourcing offices in Asia. Cole Haan is sold in more than 600 retail stores globally, digital platforms around the world and within our department store and specialty retail partners.
We seek hard-working team members who are entrepreneurial-minded, solutions-oriented who accept and own accountability, model integrity, value individuality and diversity, encourage teamwork and inspire creativity.
TITLE: Senior Manager, BI & Analytics Engineering
JOB MISSION: The Senior Manager, BI & Analytics Engineering leads the team behind business intelligence, analytics and reporting across Cole Haan — enterprise reporting, SAP S/4HANA reporting and data, the analytics backlog, and the data work that supports Retail, Supply Chain, Wholesale, Ecommerce and Finance. The role owns what is built and how it is built: technical approach, engineering standards, the development of the team, and the technical performance of the partners who build alongside it.
This is a hands-on technical leadership role. It requires enough command of data modeling, reporting design and query performance to specify work precisely, review what comes back, and judge whether something presented as complete and enough leadership to build that capability into the team rather than supplying it personally. It is not a coordination role, and it is not an architecture role: enterprise data strategy, governance and architecture sit with the Senior Director, Data & Analytics. A project manager aligned to this portfolio by the IT PMO carries the plan, delivery timing and communication with the business about dates.
Cole Haan has moved onto SAP S/4HANA, and reporting and analytics are being rebuilt around it at the same time as the business continues to ask for new analysis. Demand is growing across functions and now extends into AI enablement. The function has had no engineering leadership below the Senior Director; technical direction and day-to-day execution have both run through one person, which does not scale and leaves the team without anyone whose job is to develop it.
CORE ACCOUNTABILITIES:
Engineering Leadership
- Own the technical approach: how reporting, models and data products are built, to what standard, by whom, and whether they are fit to release
- Own a named technical owner and a visible status on every active item, and surface work at risk of missing its date early and in writing rather than at the gate
- Provide level of effort and the technical resources required, as the input to portfolio planning, and be able to show the basis for an estimate when it is questioned
- Coordinate internal, offshore, contract and partner capacity against the agreed plan
- Apply direct technical depth to challenge estimates, data models, report designs and build approaches before work is committed
- Working knowledge of how AI is being applied to BI development — code and query generation, semantic layer assistance, automated testing and documentation — and judgment about where it genuinely improves delivery and where it does not
SAP S/4HANA Reporting and Stabilization
- Lead reporting and analytics engineering and stabilization for SAP S/4HANA, working with business process owners to sequence the backlog against capacity
- Ensure every reporting deliverable released has documented acceptance criteria and a reconciliation to source. No release is accepted on a walkthrough alone
- Where a reporting issue originates upstream in transactional data, master data or configuration, identify it as such, raise it with the SAP delivery organization and track it, rather than absorbing it as a reporting defect
Hands on Expectation
- This role is expected to work in the platform, and the expectation is bounded by kind rather than by volume
- In scope: design and code review, solving the problems the team cannot, unblocking the critical path, prototyping, and raising the standard of what the team produces
- Not in scope: being carried on the plan as delivery capacity. Where this role becomes a named resource against committed work, the team loses its engineering leader, and the development of the team stops. That trade is made deliberately and temporarily or not at all
Vendor and Partner Performance
- Judge the work of analytics partners and contractors. Accept or reject deliverables against acceptance criteria and evidence of completed outcomes, not percentage-complete reporting
- The relationship with the offshore development partner sits with the analytics development lead in this team. This role owns the technical standard, the acceptance decision and overall partner performance, and works through that lead rather than around them
- Translate statements of work into measurable deliverables, milestones and acceptance criteria, and maintain a documented record of partner performance against commitments
- Evaluate whether the sourcing model has the right shape for the work, and bring forward a substantiated view on where capability should be added, consolidated, replaced or brought in-house — rather than working around gaps in it
Team Leadership and Development
- Lead, coach and develop a small team of experienced specialists who have not had an engineering leader above them. Establish clear ownership of domains, commitments, documentation and issue resolution
- Ensure each team member owns a defined domain and is the named contact the business goes to for it, building direct business relationships rather than routing through a single point
- Support workforce planning, role definition, recruiting and onboarding
Standing Platform Responsibility
- Own the analytics estate as a continuing responsibility beyond stabilization: the enhancement backlog and its sequencing against business priority, release cadence and regression discipline, data quality and platform performance
- Maintain a documented view of core measure definitions and how they are changed, so that numbers reported to the business reconcile across reports and functions
Working with the PMO
A project manager aligned to this portfolio by the Director, IT PMO is an embedded partner, not an observer. The division is consistent:
- The project manager owns the when — capacity planning across proposed and committed work, sequencing against portfolio commitments, realistic delivery timing, risks, dependencies, status reporting, stage gates, and communication with the business about dates, constraints and changes to commitments
- This role owns the what and the how — technical feasibility, solution approach, level of effort, the technical resources required, and the dependencies, risks and assumptions that bear on the plan
- Neither moves work out of a committed release, or changes what has been promised, without the other in the conversation
- This role and the team remain in the room with the business for requirements and solution playback. The project manager convenes and records those sessions but does not attend in the team’s place
Authority
The following sit with this role, delegated by the Senior Director, Data & Analytics, and are exercised without seeking approval case by case:
- Technical approach and engineering standards within the architecture and data standards set by the Senior Director
- Acceptance or rejection of partner and contractor deliverables against agreed acceptance criteria
- Technical trade-offs within agreed architecture and data standards, and the disposition of technical risks — what is accepted, what is mitigated, and what is escalated
- Work allocation and prioritization across the BI delivery team
- Level of effort and the technical resource plan. Delivery dates are set through portfolio planning on this role’s estimate; where the estimate is questioned, the basis for it is open to challenge and this role is expected to show it
- Technical readiness recommendation for release. The project manager runs the readiness gate and confirms that the delivery criteria are met. The release decision sits with the Senior Director, Data & Analytics
Role Boundaries
- This role owns what is built and how it is built — technical approach, engineering standards, and the team that delivers it. When it is delivered sits with the IT PMO. Why it is built, and the architecture it is built within, is set above the role
- Enterprise data strategy, governance, architecture and AI enablement sit with the Senior Director, Data & Analytics. This role delivers within that direction, is accountable for ensuring design review occurs, and escalates where a design cannot be delivered against the commitment rather than working around it
- The IT PMO owns enterprise delivery discipline, including demand intake standards, governance, stage gates, portfolio visibility, capacity planning, sequencing and delivery timing, through the project manager aligned to this portfolio
- SAP transactional delivery, master data and configuration sit with the SAP delivery organization. This role owns reporting and analytics built on that data and the identification of issues that originate upstream
- 8+ years in business intelligence, analytics, data or technology delivery
- 3+ years leading technical teams, including senior individual contributors and partner resources — with evidence of having developed people, not only directed work
- Hands-on depth in data modeling, semantic layers, SQL and reporting design — sufficient to specify, review and validate work rather than relay it
- Demonstrated ownership of the technical execution and quality of enterprise reporting, with a record of accurate estimates and early risk signaling
- Experience delivering reporting on an ERP platform, preferably SAP, including reporting stabilization after a major implementation
- Retail and wholesale process understanding across merchandising, inventory, order management and finance — sufficient to interrogate a data model, not simply recognize the terms
- Demonstrated management of partner and contractor performance against statements of work, including rejecting deliverables that did not meet criteria
- Experience coordinating distributed, offshore and contract development resource
- Credibility with functional leadership and senior stakeholders — able to hold a position on delivery matters, including when the position is unwelcome
Preferred
- Footwear, apparel or accessories brand experience; or an adjacent sector with a comparable retail and wholesale model
- Snowflake, Tableau, Power BI, SAP BW, Fivetran, Alteryx or comparable platforms
- Experience establishing data definition standards and governance practice with business functions
- Exposure to AI enablement for analytics
- Project-based travel up to 20 percent
Base Salary/Hourly Range: From $155,000 to $185,000 annually*
Bonus Eligibility: Yes, eligible for annual target bonus based on company and individual performance
Benefits Offered: Health Insurance, Dental Insurance, Vision Care, Health Savings Account with Employer Contribution, Flexible Spending Accounts, 401(k) Retirement Plan with Employer Matching Contributions, Short-Term Disability Insurance, Life Insurance, Vacation Time, Sick Time, Paid Parental Leave, Adoption Assistance Program, Charitable Matching Gifts Program, Holidays and Cole Haan Discounts
Paid Time Off: Paid vacation days starting at 120 hours, 11 paid company and personal holidays, 3 volunteer days
Sick Leave: Eligible non-exempt employees earn one hour of sick time for every 30 hours worked. Eligible exempt full-time employees earn 2.67 hours of sick time each bi-weekly pay period
*Rate of pay dependent upon candidates’ relevant skills, experience, and location
