Lead Product Manager - Recommendations

About Scribd, Inc.

Scribd, Inc. aims to enhance human understanding through its platforms—Scribd®, Slideshare®, Everand™, and Fable—which serve billions globally by moving beyond mere access towards insight, application, and expertise.

Our culture values authenticity and boldness, encouraging debate, commitment, and empowerment focused on prioritizing customer needs. We balance individual flexibility with meaningful community engagement through Scribd Flex, allowing employees to choose work styles and locations that maximize performance while expecting occasional in-person collaboration.

At Scribd, we seek employees demonstrating “GRIT,” defined as passion and perseverance for long-term goals, guiding our framework: setting Goals, delivering Results, driving Innovation, and building a cohesive Team.

Role Overview

You will spearhead the recommendations experience for Scribd, influencing how 200 million monthly users discover relevant content from a pool of 300 million documents. This position intersects machine learning and product management to deliver tailored content to users effectively.

Success in this role means crafting a compelling long-term vision, identifying critical performance metrics, and driving innovative features with close collaboration across Engineering, Analytics, Data Science, Design, and Machine Learning teams.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and own a comprehensive multi-year recommendations strategy, managing the roadmap from candidate generation through ranking and presentation to guide users to relevant documents.
• Collaborate closely with ML Engineering and Applied Research to translate state-of-the-art retrieval and ranking algorithms into scalable production systems that combine collaborative signals, content embeddings, and real-time behavioral data for superior personalization.
• Identify, track, and analyze key success metrics such as engagement, click-through rates, content consumption, subscription conversion, and retention.
• Deliver both incremental improvements for immediate revenue impact and build a robust recommendations platform aligned with Scribd's AI strategy for the next three years.
• Incorporate diverse data sources including A/B testing outcomes, behavioral analytics, user interviews, and feedback to guide feature prioritization and design.
• Effectively communicate requirements, timelines, and expected results to product, engineering, design, content, and leadership stakeholders to maintain alignment and momentum.

Required Qualifications

• Minimum 8 years in product management, with at least 4 years focusing on recommendations or search products in consumer-facing, high-traffic environments.
• Proven track record delivering machine learning-driven features that significantly influenced business metrics like engagement, revenue, or conversion at scale.
• Strong understanding of retrieval and ranking methodologies, embeddings, and feature stores, coupled with the ability to strategize user journeys for various segments.
• Experience navigating ambiguity by setting long-term visions, coordinating cross-disciplinary teams, and delivering incremental wins.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and oral, with the ability to prepare compelling product briefs and present data-supported decisions to executives.
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or related technical disciplines.

Preferred Extras

• Proficiency with AI productivity and analytics tools including LLM-based workflows, SQL copilots, and data exploration platforms to enable rapid prototyping and hypothesis testing without heavy engineering reliance.
• Experience designing advanced discovery experiences leveraging LLMs and generative AI to provide tailored task-specific recommendations.
• Familiarity with contemporary ML operations technologies.

Location and Work Model

This is an onsite role based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Occasional in-person collaboration is expected as part of Scribd Flex’s flexible but connected work environment.

Compensation and Benefits

Salary for this role in Canada ranges from 179000 to 228000 CAD annually, reflecting local market benchmarks, skills, experience, and organizational considerations. The position offers competitive equity packages and a comprehensive benefits suite including:

• Flexible work arrangements with Scribd Flex
• Health, dental, vision, mental health, and disability coverage
• Generous paid time off including vacation, sick leave, holidays, volunteer time, and sabbaticals
• Paid parental leave and family support
• Retirement matching and equity ownership
• Professional development and wellness stipends
• Complimentary access to Scribd’s product suite
• Access to enterprise AI tools

Additional Information

Scribd values diversity and equal opportunity employment regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, or any other protected attribute. Applicants requiring accommodations in the hiring process may request reasonable adjustments to ensure access.

Employees must reside in or near Toronto or other approved cities in the US, Canada, or Mexico, with commuting feasible.