Director, Product Discovery ()

About The Company:

At Scribd (pronounced scribbed) our mission is to spark human curiosity. Join our team as we create a world of stories and knowledge democratize the exchange of ideas and information and empower collective expertise through our four products: Everand Scribd Slideshare and Fable.

We support a culture where our employees can be real and be bold; where we debate and commit as we embrace plot twists; and where every employee is empowered to take action as we prioritize the customer.

When it comes to workplace structure we believe in balancing individual flexibility and community connections. Its through our flexible work benefit Scribd Flex that employees in partnership with their manager can choose the daily work-style that best suits their individual needs. A key tenet of Scribd Flex is our prioritization of intentional in-person moments to build collaboration culture and connection. For this reason occasional in-person attendance is required for all Scribd employees regardless of their location.

So what are we looking for in new team members Well we hire for GRIT. The textbook definition of GRIT is demonstrating the intersection of passion and perseverance towards long term goals. At Scribd we are inspired by the potential that this can unlock and ask each of our employees to pursue a GRIT-ty approach to their a tactical sense GRIT is also a handy acronym that outlines the standards we hold ourselves and each other to. Heres what that means for you: were looking for someone who showcases the ability to set and achieve Goals achieve Results within their job responsibilities contribute Innovative ideas and solutions and positively influence the broader Team through collaboration and attitude.

About the team and role

We are building a new Discovery product organization at and this role is the founding Director of Product for that group. You will lead the strategy and execution across our recommendations search ranking and discovery experiences.

Our corpus spans hundreds of millions of documents and our goal is not just to help people find files but to help hundreds of millions of applied learners discover the knowledge inside those documents. You will define how we evolve from traditional search and recs into a real-time LLM-augmented discovery system that understands user intent reasons across our corpus and returns trustworthy explainable results.

This is both a strategic and operational leadership role. You will manage and mentor PM leaders partner with Engineering Machine Learning Applied Research Design Content and Data Science and establish the discovery roadmap that will shape s long-term engagement retention and subscription growth.

About you

You are a product leader who lives at the intersection of user problems ML systems and business outcomes. You have built or led teams that own discovery personalization or search at meaningful scale and you are comfortable shaping long-term vision while shipping iterative value along the way. You can talk embeddings and LLM architectures with engineers and you can just as easily frame a strategy for executives in terms of learner outcomes and subscription value. You are excited by the challenge of turning a massive UGC corpus into a trusted intelligent learning companion.

You will

• Set the multi-year Discovery strategy.

• Define and drive the long-term vision for Scribds discovery ecosystem including recommendations search ranking and semantic content understanding.

• Articulate how we move from document-level retrieval to knowledge-level discovery using foundational models and LLMs.

• Align this vision with company priorities in engagement retention and subscription growth balancing foundational ML investments with high-impact product improvements.

Lead and grow a world-class product organization

• Serve as the founding product leader for the Discovery group managing mentoring and inspiring a team of product managers across discovery surfaces and platforms.

• Recruit and develop top PM talent set a high bar for product craft and build a culture that combines deep technical curiosity with strong user empathy.

• Establish durable cross-functional operating rhythms with Engineering ML Data Science Design Content and Trust & Safety.

Build next generation discovery systems using LLMs and ML

• Oversee the evolution of Scribds personalization and retrieval stack combining semantic embeddings behavioral signals hybrid retrieval and LLM-powered reasoning.

• Partner with ML Engineering and Applied Research to design and ship real-time systems for retrieval ranking and evaluation that operate at global scale and under tight latency budgets.

• Lead the development of generative recommendation experiences that help users understand why content is relevant and what they might learn from it.

• Drive real-time intent modeling and personalization that react to user behavior within and across sessions.

Create AI-forward discovery experiences for learners

• Own end-to-end discovery journeys from homepage and feeds to search results and document detail pages ensuring users confidently find the right content quickly.

• Introduce AI overviews and conversational question-aware interfaces that help users ask richer questions and receive synthesized sourced answers grounded in our corpus.

Champion a rigorous experimentation and metrics culture

• Define the metrics that matter for long-term subscription value discovery satisfaction and content health across

• Lead a robust experimentation agenda with clear hypotheses guardrails and data-driven decision making across discovery surfaces.

• Ensure that LLM and ML driven features ship with clear hypotheses guardrails and monitoring including trust safety and quality considerations.

Influence through clear compelling communication

• Develop executive-level narratives that articulate strategy roadmap progress and impact for the Discovery organization.

• Build trusted collaborative partnerships across global teams and guide multi-quarter and multi-year roadmaps across time zones and functional groups.

• Communicate tradeoffs and decisions clearly to partners at every level from engineers and researchers to executive leadership.
  

You Have

• 10 years of product management experience including 5 years managing PM teams or leading multi-disciplinary product groups.

• Demonstrated success owning discovery personalization search or ranking experiences at scale in a consumer technology environment.

• Deep technical fluency in modern ML and AI systems including retrieval and ranking semantic embeddings LLMs retrieval augmented generation feature stores model evaluation and real-time personalization.

• A strong track record of translating user needs data insights and competitive trends into breakthrough discovery features ideally including ML or LLM powered experiences.

• Proven ability to lead through ambiguity make strategic tradeoffs and balance long-term platform investments with near-term business results.

• Exceptional written visual and verbal communication skills including experience presenting to executives and cross-functional partners.

• Experience running large-scale A/B tests user research and multi-surface experimentation programs.

• Bachelors degree in a technical or related field (Computer Science Engineering Mathematics HCI) or equivalent experience.

Ideally you have

• Experience building or leading LLM-powered products such as AI search conversational assistants generative recommendations or AI overviews.

• Background in information retrieval recommender systems or NLP either in industry or academic research.

• Experience with large UGC ecosystems marketplaces or platforms where content quality and trust are central to discovery.

• Experience standing up or scaling a new product group or charter including hiring and mentoring senior PMs.

At Scribd your base pay is one part of your total compensation package and is determined within a range. Our pay ranges are based on the local cost of labor benchmarks for each specific role level and geographic location. San Francisco is our highest geographic market in the United the state of California the reasonably expected salary range is between $173000 minimum salary in our lowest geographic market within California to $275000 maximum salary in our highest geographic market within California.

In the United States outside of California the reasonably expected salary range is between $142500 minimum salary in our lowest US geographic market outside of California to $266250 maximum salary in our highest US geographic market outside of California.

In Canada the reasonably expected salary range is between $181000 CADminimum salary in our lowest geographic market to $249250 CADmaximum salary in our highest geographic market.

We carefully consider a wide range of factors when determining compensation including but not limited to experience; job-related skill sets; relevant education or training; and other business and organizational needs. The salary range listed is for the level at which this job has been the event that you are considered for a different level a higher or lower pay range would apply. This position is also eligible for a competitive equity ownership and a comprehensive and generous benefits package.

Working at Scribd inc.

Are you currently based in a location where Scribd is able to employ you
Employees must have their primary residence in or near one of the following cities. This includes surrounding metro areas or locations within a typical commuting distance:

United States:

Atlanta Austin Boston Dallas Denver Chicago Houston Jacksonville Los Angeles Miami New York City Phoenix Portland Sacramento Salt Lake City San Diego San Francisco Seattle Washington D.C.

Canada:

Ottawa Toronto Vancouver

Mexico:

Mexico City

Benefits Perks and Wellbeing at Scribd

*Benefits/perks listed may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Scribd and the geographical location where you work.

• Healthcare Insurance Coverage (Medical/Dental/Vision): 100% paid for employees

• 12 weeks paid parental leave

• Short-term/long-term disability plans

• 401k/RSP matching

• Onboarding stipend for home office peripherals accessories

• Learning & Development allowance

• Learning & Development programs

• Quarterly stipend for Wellness WiFi etc.

• Mental Health support & resources

• Free subscription to the Scribd Inc. suite of products

• Referral Bonuses

• Book Benefit

• Sabbaticals

• Company-wide events

• Team engagement budgets

• Vacation & Personal Days

• Paid Holidays ( winter break)

• Flexible Sick Time

• Volunteer Day

• Company-wide Employee Resource Groups and programs that foster an inclusive and diverse workplace.

• Access to AI Tools: We provide free access to best-in-class AI tools empowering you to boost productivity streamline workflows and accelerate bold innovation.

Want to learn more about life at Scribd want our interview process to be accessible to everyone. You can inform us of any reasonable adjustments we can make to better accommodate your needs by emailing about the need for adjustments at any point in the interview process.

Scribd is committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race color religion national origin gender sexual orientation age marital status veteran status disability status or any other characteristic protected by law. We encourage people of all backgrounds to apply and believe that a diversity of perspectives and experiences create a foundation for the best ideas. Come join us in building something meaningful.

Required Experience:

Director