Scribd, Inc.
Director, Product Discovery (Scribd.com)
Scribd, Inc., Sacramento, California, United States, 95828
Director, Product Discovery (Scribd.com)
Join to apply for the
Director, Product Discovery (Scribd.com)
role at
Scribd, Inc.
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 employees can be real and bold; where we debate and commit as we embrace plot twists; and where every employee is empowered to take action with a focus on the customer. We believe in balancing flexibility and community connections. Through Scribd Flex, employees can choose the daily work‑style that best suits their needs, while intentional in‑person moments build collaboration, culture, and connection. Occasional in‑person attendance is required for all employees, regardless of location. We hire for “GRIT” – the intersection of passion and perseverance. We look for individuals who showcase the ability to set and achieve Goals, Results, Innovate, and positively influence the Team.
About the Team and Role We are building a new Discovery product organization on Scribd.com. This role is the founding Director of Product for that group, leading strategy and execution across recommendations, search, ranking, and discovery experiences. Our goal is to transform our huge document corpus into a real‑time, LLM‑augmented discovery system that understands user intent, reasons across our corpus, and returns trustworthy, explainable results. This strategic and operational leadership role involves managing and mentoring PM leaders, partnering with Engineering, Machine Learning, Applied Research, Design, Content, and Data Science, and shaping the discovery roadmap to drive engagement, retention, and subscription growth.
About You You are a product leader 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 thrive in shaping long‑term vision while shipping iterative value. You can discuss embeddings and LLM architectures with engineers and frame strategy for executives in terms of learner outcomes and subscription value. You are excited by 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 Scribd’s discovery ecosystem, including recommendations, search, ranking, and semantic content understanding.
Articulate the 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 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.
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 Scribd.com.
Lead a robust experimentation agenda with clear hypotheses, guardrails, and data‑driven decision making across discovery surfaces.
Ensure 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.
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.
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.
Compensation Base pay varies by location. In San Francisco, the expected salary range is $173,000 to $275,000. In California outside San Francisco, the range is $142,500 to $266,250. In Canada, the range is $181,000 CAD to $249,250 CAD. The role may also include equity and a comprehensive benefits package.
Working at Scribd, Inc. Employees must have their primary residence in or near one of the following cities: (list of US, Canada, Mexico cities). 12‑week paid parental leave; medical/dental/vision coverage 100% paid; 401(k)/RSP matching; learning & development allowance; flexible sick time; and many more perks. 100% of employees receive free subscription to Scribd.
We want our interview process to be accessible to everyone. You can inform us of any reasonable adjustments by emailing accommodations@scribd.com. 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.
#J-18808-Ljbffr
Director, Product Discovery (Scribd.com)
role at
Scribd, Inc.
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 employees can be real and bold; where we debate and commit as we embrace plot twists; and where every employee is empowered to take action with a focus on the customer. We believe in balancing flexibility and community connections. Through Scribd Flex, employees can choose the daily work‑style that best suits their needs, while intentional in‑person moments build collaboration, culture, and connection. Occasional in‑person attendance is required for all employees, regardless of location. We hire for “GRIT” – the intersection of passion and perseverance. We look for individuals who showcase the ability to set and achieve Goals, Results, Innovate, and positively influence the Team.
About the Team and Role We are building a new Discovery product organization on Scribd.com. This role is the founding Director of Product for that group, leading strategy and execution across recommendations, search, ranking, and discovery experiences. Our goal is to transform our huge document corpus into a real‑time, LLM‑augmented discovery system that understands user intent, reasons across our corpus, and returns trustworthy, explainable results. This strategic and operational leadership role involves managing and mentoring PM leaders, partnering with Engineering, Machine Learning, Applied Research, Design, Content, and Data Science, and shaping the discovery roadmap to drive engagement, retention, and subscription growth.
About You You are a product leader 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 thrive in shaping long‑term vision while shipping iterative value. You can discuss embeddings and LLM architectures with engineers and frame strategy for executives in terms of learner outcomes and subscription value. You are excited by 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 Scribd’s discovery ecosystem, including recommendations, search, ranking, and semantic content understanding.
Articulate the 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 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.
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 Scribd.com.
Lead a robust experimentation agenda with clear hypotheses, guardrails, and data‑driven decision making across discovery surfaces.
Ensure 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.
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.
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.
Compensation Base pay varies by location. In San Francisco, the expected salary range is $173,000 to $275,000. In California outside San Francisco, the range is $142,500 to $266,250. In Canada, the range is $181,000 CAD to $249,250 CAD. The role may also include equity and a comprehensive benefits package.
Working at Scribd, Inc. Employees must have their primary residence in or near one of the following cities: (list of US, Canada, Mexico cities). 12‑week paid parental leave; medical/dental/vision coverage 100% paid; 401(k)/RSP matching; learning & development allowance; flexible sick time; and many more perks. 100% of employees receive free subscription to Scribd.
We want our interview process to be accessible to everyone. You can inform us of any reasonable adjustments by emailing accommodations@scribd.com. 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.
#J-18808-Ljbffr