Customer Intelligence & AI Manager

Company

"A perfume is a world you can return to over and over again-a keyhole into far off places-material and imaginary."

D.S. & Durga is a Brooklyn fragrance house on a quest to create thrilling perfumes inspired by music, myth, and the mundane. Founded in 2009 by David (D.S.) and Kavi (Durga) Moltz, the brand is known for its uniquely distinguished perfumes, candles, and aromatic products. All fragrances and design worlds are original compositions, rooted in specificity, surrealism, and clarity.

With distribution across 600 doors globally and five freestanding stores in NYC and LA, the brand is entering a new phase of growth following Manzanita Capital's majority investment in 2024.

Role Overview

D.S. & Durga has built a loyal following through creative vision, and its next chapter depends on sustainable growth grounded in a clear, unified understanding of the customer - something the business has never had. Right now, customer data exists everywhere and is owned nowhere: DTC, retail, social, and commercial teams each see a different slice of the picture, and major decisions about products, launches, investments, and channels get made without a shared view of who the customer actually is. The Manager, Customer Intelligence & AI exists to close that gap, building a trusted, fact-based customer intelligence function rather than a reporting role. It reports to the CMO to protect its objectivity, while partnering closely with the Senior Manager, Global Marketing & Innovation to prioritize where that intelligence gets applied and embed it into campaign, innovation, and pricing decisions.

This person will build and own D.S. & Durgas customer intelligence capability from the ground up, working across marketing, commercial, retail, and the creative studio to connect, interpret, and make useful the data that already exists - not to collect it, but to unify it into a single actionable picture, in partnership with the teams (social, web, DTC, retail) who own the underlying sources. The role unfolds in two phases: first building the internal customer view, SKU-level data infrastructure, and core reporting; then expanding into brand and market intelligence, including competitive benchmarking, share of voice, and cultural trend monitoring. As a single-person function from the outset, the role requires genuine LLM fluency - training, fine-tuning, and directing models and agents to do the work of a team that doesnt exist yet, making automation and AI-assisted analysis the foundation of the functions credibility.

Key Responsibilities

Phase One - Customer & Business View

• Build one unified, omni-channel customer view based on real purchasing behavior, basket data, lifetime value, frequency, channel preference, and product affinity
• Deliver SKU-level intelligence - whats selling, what isnt, where, at what price point, in which channel, and why
• Own monthly dashboard and reporting, giving leadership, commercial, retail, and marketing a consistent view of business performance, customer behavior, and emerging trends
• Integrate social, web, DTC, and retail data sources into a single intelligence framework
• Develop customer segmentation that reflects both target audience strategy and data reality, informing innovation priorities, marketing investment, and commercial planning
• Train and direct AI models and agents to automate reporting, accelerate analysis, and surface insight faster - giving the function the leverage of a small team while it remains one person

Phase Two - Brand & Market Intelligence

• Track brand health - awareness, consideration, sentiment, and share of voice across key markets
• Lead competitive benchmarking and category trend monitoring
• Monitor AI visibility - how D.S. & Durga appears in AI-generated search and recommendations
• Partner with Global Marketing on consumer research initiatives - surveys, panels, qualitative studies
• Track cultural trend signals relevant to the brands world - music, travel, fragrance, design, literature

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Serve as a connective force across marketing, commercial, retail, and the creative studio without owning every underlying data source
• Partner day-to-day with the Senior Manager, Global Marketing & Innovation to prioritize where intelligence is applied and embed it into campaign, innovation, and pricing decisions
• Maintain independence and objectivity so insights are trusted as unfiltered, fact-based signal rather than shaped by any one functions priorities

Competencies: To perform the job successfully, an individual should demonstrate the following:

Achievement Focus - Demonstrates persistence and overcomes obstacles. Measures self against a standard of excellence. Sets and achieves challenging goals, especially as the sole owner of a new function.

Analytical Rigor - Moves comfortably between a data model and a leadership presentation. Understands that insight is only as valuable as the decision it changes.

Continuous Learning - Builds fluency in AI tools and models on an ongoing basis. Trains, fine-tunes, and directs agents rather than waiting for headcount.

Communications - Expresses ideas clearly in written and verbal form. Brings people along when asking them to share data or change how they work.

Planning & Organization - Prioritizes across two phases of work. Builds infrastructure and reporting systems from the ground up in a resource-constrained environment.

Problem Solving - Makes something from nothing. Gathers and connects data across disparate, unowned sources to produce a coherent, actionable picture.

Teamwork - Operates as a shared resource across marketing, commercial, retail, and the creative studio. Balances independence with close cross-functional partnership.

Use of Technology - Adapts to and directs AI models and agents as core working tools. Treats automation as the foundation of the functions credibility, not a supplement to it.

qualifications: To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Education/Experience:

• 5 to 8 years of experience in consumer insights, customer analytics, business intelligence or a closely related field.
• Experience in prestige beauty, fragrance, luxury or a high-growth consumer brand - in-house or at a leading insights or strategy consultancy.
• Strong command of both quantitative and qualitative approaches to understanding consumers.
• Proficiency with analytics platforms, CRM systems and data visualization tools.
• Genuinely LLM-efficient: hands-on experience training, fine-tuning, prompting and directing models and agents to do real analytical and operational work - not just familiarity with AI tools at a surface level.
• Experience presenting insights to senior leadership and translating data into clear strategic recommendations.
• Comfort operating as a shared resource across multiple functions, with a dotted-line relationship to a function head.
• Experience building reporting infrastructure and dashboards from scratch is a strong plus.
• Experience standing up a function solo - comfortable being a department of one until the business case for a team is proven - is a strong plus.

Language Ability:

Read, analyze and interpret business, professional, technical or governmental documents. Write reports, business correspondence and procedure manuals. Effectively present information and respond to questions from managers, customers and the public.

Mathematical Ability:

Add, subtract, multiply and divide in all units of measure, using whole numbers, common fractions and decimals. Compute rate, ratio and percent, and draw and interpret bar graphs.

Reasoning Ability:

Solve practical problems and deal with a variety of concrete variables in situations where only limited standardization exists. Interpret a variety of instructions furnished in written, oral, diagram, or schedule form.

Computer Skills:

• MS Office, comfort with AI/LLM tools, model training and fine-tuning, and directing agent-driven workflows, familiarity with data visualization and reporting platforms

Benefits:

• The salary range for this role is $95,000-$120,000 dependent upon experience
• Location: Brooklyn, NY (Hybrid- 3 days per week in office)
• Full Time employees are eligible for medical, dental and vision insurance, employer paid life insurance, 401k plan, pre tax commuter benefits, quarterly gratis, employee discount, long-term & short- term disability leave and much more.

Supervisory Responsibilities: This job has no supervisory responsibilities.

Work Environment: The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate.

Physical Demands: The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to sit. The employee is frequently required to use hands to finger, handle, or feel and talk or hear. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision.

The above job description is not intended to be an all-inclusive list of duties and standards of the position. Incumbents will follow any other instructions, and perform any other related duties, as assigned by their supervisor.

D.S. & Durga is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, gender (including gender identity or expression), pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, sexual orientation, marital status, domestic violence, sexual violence or stalking victim status, ancestry, national origin, alienage or citizenship, age, disability, military or veteran status, genetic information or predisposing genetic characteristic, or other protected status.