Careers

Category Manager, Card Authentication

Category Management – Remote (US, New York preferred)

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About the team

Legitmark is building the trust layer for resale. We believe that authentication should be fast, accurate, and accessible to everyone, from individual sellers to the world's largest marketplaces. Our team of experts and engineers authenticate millions of items annually, helping buyers shop with confidence and sellers maximize value.

About the role

We're hiring a Category Manager to lead Legitmark's expansion into cards, spanning sports cards, trading card games, and related collectible cards. This is a first-of-its-kind hire for the category: you'll own it end-to-end, from defining what "authenticated" means for a card to building the team that delivers on it. You'll set the authentication and grading standards for the category, translate them into repeatable processes, and make sure Product builds the right tools to support them. Once the category is live, you own its health: throughput, accuracy, and growth. This role also owns the people side of the category. You'll hire and train the specialists who authenticate cards day to day, and you'll be their long-term manager, responsible for quality, development, and performance over time. This position is remote, with a preference for candidates based in or near New York.

In this role, you'll:

  • •Design authentication and grading standards for cards, including condition criteria (centering, corners, edges, surface), defect taxonomy, and edge-case rulings
  • •Define detection standards for counterfeits and card doctoring, including trimming, recoloring, restoration, and resealed packs
  • •Translate standards into documented, repeatable intake and authentication processes for the operations team
  • •Partner with Product and Engineering to inform roadmap decisions and tooling needed to support the category
  • •Own the category launch plan: scope, timeline, staffing, and success metrics
  • •Maintain and grow the category post-launch by expanding coverage, tuning throughput and quality, and responding to demand
  • •Hire authentication specialists for the category and build out the team as volume grows
  • •Train new hires on standards, grading methodology, and tooling
  • •Provide ongoing supervision of category staff, including quality audits, coaching, and performance management
  • •Set and manage production goals that balance throughput with grading accuracy and consistency
  • •Stay current on industry developments, especially new counterfeits and alteration methods circulating the market, and evolve standards to counter them
  • •Monitor category-level metrics and report on health, growth, and risks

Your first 90 days

  • •Day 30: Standards and processes set. You've immersed in how Legitmark authenticates today, drafted grading and counterfeit-detection standards for the initial sub-category, translated them into repeatable intake and authentication workflows, and aligned with Product and Engineering on tooling.
  • •Day 60: Category live. We're authenticating cards in production with defined scope, staffing, and success metrics, and hiring for your first authentication specialists is underway.
  • •Day 90: Growing. Coverage is expanding, throughput and accuracy are tuned against real volume, and you're reporting on category health with a clear plan to scale.

We're looking for someone with:

  • •5-8 years of experience in card grading, authentication, or category/merchandising management, ideally with exposure to companies like PSA, Beckett, CGC, SGC, or comparable grading and marketplace operations
  • •Expert-level understanding of card grading systems and standards across sports cards, non-sports cards, and/or TCGs, including vintage and modern eras
  • •Expert knowledge of the counterfeiting and card doctoring methods that exist in the industry, and how to detect them at production speed without compromising accuracy
  • •Working knowledge of card printing processes, variants, and errors, and how they factor into authentication and grading decisions
  • •A track record of building or scaling operational processes from scratch
  • •Experience hiring, training, and managing frontline staff, with real ownership of their performance over time
  • •Comfort partnering cross-functionally with Product and Engineering to shape what gets built
  • •Strong process and documentation skills — you can turn tacit expertise into something a new hire can follow
  • •Ability to own ambiguous scope and act as the internal domain expert for the category

Nice to have:

  • •Experience launching a new product category or business line from the ground up
  • •Existing relationships within the card grading and marketplace ecosystem (eBay, PWCC, Alt, COMC, or similar)
  • •Background in high-volume, quality-controlled physical inspection workflows
  • •Familiarity with authentication or grading software tooling

You might thrive in this role if:

  • •You're a category builder. You want to define how an entire category gets authenticated, not just execute someone else's playbook.
  • •You think in systems. You design standards and processes that scale, not one-off judgment calls.
  • •You're a people manager at heart. You genuinely enjoy hiring, training, and developing a team over the long run.
  • •You're comfortable with ambiguity. You're the expert in the room, and you're ready to make the calls when there's no existing precedent.

About Legitmark

Legitmark is an authentication services company that verifies luxury goods and sneakers for the world's largest resale platforms. Our human-powered approach delivers 98-99% accuracy with industry-leading turnaround times, serving over 125,000 businesses globally.

We are an equal opportunity employer.

Apply now