Market Manager, Operational Compliance

The Role 

The Market Manager, Operational Compliance provides leadership over the Retail and Production compliance program including appropriate direction, oversight and support for all compliance functions and integration of compliance activities across New Jersey. Responsibilities include ensuring all laws, regulations, and standards set by regulatory bodies, including cannabis commissions/boards, environmental, OSHA, and product/food safety regulations are implemented and executed across their assigned area.  

Travel for this position is up to 20% throughout the state of New Jersey.

Responsibilities 

• Serves as the subject matter expert on state regulations within their market – has an intimate understanding of the regulations and collaborates with key partners to understand their impact on the business.  
• Where regulations allow, owns the relationship as the company’s single point of contact with regulatory agencies within their market, collaborates with key partners to support proactive communication and/or follow up action items specific to regulatory contacts/inspections, and hosts inspections when possible. 
• Monitor and interpret laws, regulations, and industry standards for assigned market and coordinate process improvement needs and documentation updates to support.  
• Develops processes to track, monitor, trend and analyze regulatory requirement changes and external compliance communications from regulators.  
• Ensures through proper documentation, monitoring, auditing, and reporting activities that the business is compliant with licensing, system, community, and business commitments. 
• Partners with key stakeholders to update packaging and labeling compliance grids and checklists; reviews teams’ output for compliance, and then completes product, packaging, and labeling, and/or equipment submissions as needed. 
• Collaborates with key business partners to update regulatory signage, identify system enhancements to improve inventory management compliance, supports growth opportunities with new store openings/relocations, and supports activities specific to the expansion of offerings within the market. 
• Coordinates training and awareness programs for employees on compliance obligations and responsibilities. 
• Optimize policies, procedures, and retail processes through the deployment of technology, analytics, and continuous improvement for assigned programs and/or geographies.  
• Ensures that compliance risk assessments are conducted to identify potential areas of non-compliance, including pre-inspection checklists, audits of system/seed to sale procedures; builds corrective action plans to address regulatory gaps or audit observations, including partnering with the appropriate parties to conduct investigations and updating SOPs. 
• Work with key partners to address adverse event opportunities and/or to ensure the execution of product recalls. 
• Periodically visits assigned sites to ensure all employees are performing processes and procedures accurately and ensure facility is compliant. Support the enforcement of accountability for compliance actions and make continuous improvement recommendations to leadership. 
• Coordinates the required reporting to regulators and senior leadership of major regulatory issues related to such areas as adverse events/recalls, unexpected changes to operation hours, product events/concerns and/or security. 
• Manages Operational Compliance staff working in facilities within assigned market. 

Qualifications  

• 5+ years of experience in a compliance or regulatory function or must have operated in a retail/production environment with a strong focus on compliance supporting a highly regulated industry such as cannabis, pharmaceuticals, alcohol, or tobacco preferred. 
• 3+ years of supervisory experience 
• Unassailable integrity and ethics. 
• Adapts and thrives in a demanding, fast-paced environment. 
• An individual that is initiative-taking, able to work independently or among teams, and has a proactive mindset; a highly collaborative influencer who is an effective communicator and networker. 
• Experience establishing and communicating compliance procedures and policies. 
• Experience developing strategic initiatives which align with business goals. 
• Experience analyzing and/or reporting data to identify issues, trends, or exceptions to drive improvement of results and find solutions. 
• Strong ability to effectively present information and respond to questions from senior management, function heads, managers, supervisors, and all levels of employees. 

Additional Requirements 

• Must pass any and all required background checks  
• Must be and remain compliant with all legal or company regulations for working in the industry  
• Must possess valid driver’s license 
• Must be a minimum of 21 years of age 
• Must be approved by state badging agency to work in cannabis industry
• Ability to travel 20%