Scribd, Inc. · 2 weeks ago
Director of Product, Search & Discovery (Scribd.com)
San Francisco
Full-time
Hybrid
Director/Executive
$173K/yr - $275K/yr
10+ years expScribd Inc. is a company dedicated to sparking human curiosity through its diverse range of products. They are seeking a Director of Product for their new Search & Discovery product organization, responsible for leading strategy and execution across recommendations, search, ranking, and discovery experiences.
AudiobooksBooksEBooksFile SharingNewsPodcastPublishing
Responsibilities
Set the multi-year Discovery strategy
Define and drive the long-term vision for Scribd’s 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
Serve as the founding product leader for the Search & 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
Oversee the evolution of Scribd’s 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
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
Define the metrics that matter for long-term subscription value, discovery satisfaction, and content health across Scribd.com
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
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
Qualification
Required
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
Bachelor's degree in a technical or related field (Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, HCI) or equivalent experience
Preferred
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
Benefits
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.
Company
Scribd, Inc.
We're on a mission to spark human curiosity.
201-500 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Scribd, Inc. has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (5)
2024 (2)
2023 (8)
2022 (3)
2021 (12)
2020 (15)
Funding
Current Stage
Late StageTotal Funding
$106.75MKey Investors
Spectrum EquityKhosla VenturesCRV
2019-11-25Series E· $58M
2015-01-02Series D· $23M
2011-01-18Series C· $12M
Leadership Team
Tony Grimminck
Chief Executive Officer
Adrian Lienhard
VP, Infrastructure Engineering
Recent News
2026-01-05
TechCrunch
2025-12-11
Company data provided by crunchbase