Lead Product Manager, Recommendations

About the role

Scribd, Inc. is seeking a Lead Product Manager, Recommendations to drive the future of content discovery for our 200 million monthly visitors. This role requires a deep understanding of machine learning and product strategy, with a focus on creating innovative recommendation systems.

Responsibilities

• Chart the long-term recommendations strategy, owning a multi-year roadmap that spans candidate generation, ranking, and results presentation across Scribd's various platforms.
• Collaborate with ML Engineering & Applied Research to translate cutting-edge retrieval and ranking research into production systems that blend collaborative signals, content embeddings, and real-time behavioral data.
• Define metrics that truly matter for recommendations success, such as engagement rate, click-through, content completion, and downstream subscription conversion and retention.
• Balance short-term wins with long-term vision, shipping incremental relevance improvements that hit revenue goals while building an extensible recommendations platform aligned with Scribd's 3-year AI strategy.
• Fuse data with the voice of the customer through synthesis of experiment results, behavioral analytics, user interviews, and feedback to inform prioritization and feature design.
• Communicate with clarity and influence, aligning product, engineering, design, content, and executive stakeholders by clearly articulating requirements, timelines, deliverables, and expected impact.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of product management experience, including 4+ years leading recommendations or search products in a high-traffic consumer environment.
• Deep familiarity with retrieval and ranking algorithms, embeddings, and feature stores, paired with the ability to reason about end-to-end customer journeys for distinct user segments.
• Track record of thriving amid ambiguity: shaping a multi-year vision, aligning cross-functional teams, and delivering incremental wins along the way.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, adept at crafting product briefs and presenting data-backed decisions to senior leadership.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related technical field (or equivalent practical experience).

Bonus Points

• Hands-on proficiency with AI tools for productivity and analytics, including LLM-powered workflows, SQL copilots, and data exploration tools, to move fast, prototype ideas, and pressure-test assumptions without always needing engineering support.
• Experience designing LLM- and GenAI-enhanced discovery experiences that go beyond raw recommendations to deliver personalized, task-specific value.
• Familiarity with modern ML ops tooling.

Pay and Benefits

The salary range for this position is between $151,000 and $244,000, depending on location and experience. Benefits include Scribd Flex (flexible work model), comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage, mental health support and disability coverage, generous paid time off, retirement matching, and employee equity. Additionally, there are wellness and home office stipends, complimentary access to the Scribd suite of products, enterprise access to leading AI tools, and more.