Director of Vendor Compliance

Jenni Kayne is a California-based lifestyle brand that aims to empower an elevated approach to everyday living. Whether it’s our edited style ethos or coveted interiors sensibility, we work hard to create a world that's inviting and intentional. From our stores across the country to our operations and corporate teams, we believe in the power of a workplace that’s built on diversity and inclusion—where the varied voices and viewpoints of our community pave the way.

We’re looking for a senior leader to own and scale vendor compliance, import operations, and inbound logistics. This role will set the strategy, operating model, and performance standards for how product moves from vendor to warehouse—reducing risk, improving landed-cost accuracy, and building long-term organizational capability across teams and partners.

As the Director of Vendor Compliance, you will set strategy, build organizational capability, and lead cross-functional execution across vendor compliance, import operations, inbound logistics, and operational visibility.

Role and Responsibilities:

Vendor Compliance & Import Management

• Own the company’s vendor compliance strategy, standards, routing guides, and onboarding requirements to create consistent expectations across the supplier base.
• Assess the current vendor compliance and import-control environment, identify material gaps, and prioritize the highest-risk issues requiring immediate attention.
• Establish governance for HTS classification, import entry accuracy, and compliance controls, including audit cadence, escalation paths, and accountability measures.
• Lead broker and external partner oversight to ensure compliant, efficient clearance, strong documentation discipline, and rapid issue resolution.
• Reduce enterprise exposure to duty, tariff, penalty, delay, and rework risk by implementing durable policies, controls, and decision frameworks.

Freight Optimization & Forwarder Management

• Set freight and forwarding strategy across service, cost, visibility, and resilience, including assessment of current partners and alternative models.
• Evaluate current forwarder, broker, and vendor performance to establish a fact-based baseline for cost, service, and accountability.
• Identify and capture structural savings across routing, modes, consolidation, and vendor ship points while maintaining service-level and OTIF expectations.
• Build a forwarder and vendor performance-management framework that supports negotiation, executive decision-making, escalation, and continuous improvement.

NetSuite & Data Integrity

• Own the roadmap for inbound master data and transaction integrity across vendors, items, purchase orders, shipments, and receipts.
• Establish a clear operating baseline for inbound data quality, landed cost accuracy, shipment visibility, and exception management.
• Improve executive visibility into purchase orders, in-transit inventory, receipts, exceptions, and landed costs through stronger systems discipline and reporting.
• Partner with operations, finance, and systems teams to design reporting and operating cadences that enable faster, data-driven decisions.

Inbound & Warehouse Process Improvement (Lean)

• Lead the design of an efficient inbound operating model spanning receiving, put-away, exception handling, and warehouse coordination.
• Define and align a strategic roadmap with clear priorities, ownership, sequencing, and expected impact across cost, risk, service, and scalability.
• Sponsor practical process improvements that increase throughput, accuracy, and scalability across inbound and warehouse operations.
• Align teams across operations, merchandising, finance, and external partners to remove bottlenecks and improve end-to-end execution.

Dashboards & Operational Visibility

• Establish KPI dashboards and scorecards for inbound flow, freight spend, landed costs, compliance risk, and vendor performance.
• Stand up review cadences, ownership models, and escalation paths for critical issues to support disciplined operating decisions.
• Create executive-ready reporting that enables faster issue resolution, stronger accountability, and clearer decision-making.

What Success Looks Like

• A measurable reduction in compliance, duty, tariff, and operational-risk exposure across the inbound network.
• Stronger control and forecasting of freight spend, inbound cost drivers, and landed cost performance.
• Consistent executive visibility into inbound operations, exceptions, and vendor performance through reliable metrics and reporting.
• Greater leverage in vendor and forwarder negotiations through data, scorecards, and structured partner management.
• Scalable processes, clear ownership, and stronger internal capability that reduce dependency on reactive problem-solving.

Qualifications:

• 10+ years of progressive leadership experience in vendor compliance, imports, global logistics, and/or supply chain operations, including ownership of complex cross-functional initiatives.
• Deep expertise in HTS classification, customs compliance, international freight, and the control environment required to manage risk at scale.
• Proven track record building partner-management frameworks, optimizing 3PLs and forwarders, and improving service and cost performance.
• Strong systems and analytics mindset with ERP fluency (NetSuite preferred) and the ability to turn operational data into actionable executive insight.
• Demonstrated ability to lead through influence, align senior stakeholders, develop teams, and drive sustainable change across functions.

Additional Information

This job description is not all inclusive. In addition, Kayne LLC dba Jenni Kayne reserves the right to amend this job description at any time. Kayne LLC is an Equal Opportunity Employer, committed to a diverse and inclusive work environment. The annual base salary range for this position is $100,000 - $110,000. The base salary is determined by experience, education, skills, and location.