Product Manager, Ads Quality (Senior - Principal)

OVERVIEW

Every year, people across the world spend nearly one trillion dollars on groceries. Groceries are a vital part of our lives, but shopping for them hasn’t fundamentally changed since the first supermarket opened 100 years ago.

Food is sustenance, but it’s also much more than that. Food can be a part of a daily ritual or a special moment that resonates with people on a meaningful and emotional level. It can be a much-needed break in a long day, a taste that brings back memories, a creative experiment, a shared meal with loved ones, or even comfort during a hard time. Whether it’s a special occasion or an everyday occurrence, it should always be easy for people to get the ingredients they need.

The Instacart Product Team is dedicated to making grocery shopping effortless and rewarding for everyone. By helping take care of the shopping, we help people get great food and give them back time so they can do what matters most to them. We’re finding solutions to large-scale challenges that will forever change the way people feed themselves and their loved ones.

We're building a team of incredibly talented product leaders to define and execute on our vision of being the world leader in online grocery. You'll work among star engineers, designers, data scientists, and operators in a fast-growing environment. The role demands a mix of principled thinking, well-honed product sense, and technical depth.

About Instacart Ads 

Instacart Ads help brands attract and engage customers at every stage of their shopping journey — from initial keyword search and aisle browsing through checkout. Our vision is to democratize the grocery store by offering brands of all sizes an equal opportunity to reach potential customers.

About the Ad Quality Team

The mission of the Ad Quality team is to develop an efficient ad marketplace which balances advertiser value, customer value, and Instacart value. This team works on new models, marketplace products, auction dynamics, targeting mechanisms, etc. for sponsored product ads and display and video ads. The team runs experiments on every new feature and works closely with other product teams to help advertisers drive their sales on Instacart and improve the experience of Instacart customers.

ABOUT THE JOB

• You will lead a cross-functional team of engineering, data science, research, operations, and more. You will be working with the amazing team of software and machine learning engineers. You will also partner with the group of dedicated data scientists. You will closely collaborate with the product and engineering partners within ads org and other Instacart teams, as well as PMM, ads sales, and business operations teams. 
• You will be solving exciting and challenging problems of finding the right balance between user, advertiser, and Instacart value in a continuously evolving environment. 
• You will be part of the tightly knit PM team responsible for the brain (various response prediction, relevance, personalization, ad optimization, incrementality, etc. models) and the engine (ranking, auction dynamics, targeting, bidding, supply and demand optimization, whole-page optimization, pricing, etc.) of the entire ads marketplace, including various formats of sponsored product and display ads on various surfaces: search, BIA, storefront, browse, etc.
• You'll drive product definition, strategy, and long-term vision for initiatives across audiences of our marketplace, enabling brands to reach consumers through innovative experiences
• You’ll identify the biggest problems to solve and drive new feature development from start to finish
• You’ll build, measure, and iterate rapidly running data-driven experiments to inform product direction
• Communicate product plans, benefits and results to all audiences - within teams, company, to users, press etc.

ABOUT YOU

• 6+ years in Product Management at a technology company, ideally working on ad problems
• 3+ years working on search, product ads or display ads
• Experience with marketplace dynamic, response models and value tradeoffs
• Understanding of response models, relevance, incrementality
• Demonstrated ability to solve complex problems by creating customer-first solutions and thinking from first principles
• Strong data-driven problem solving skills
• Thrive in fast-paced, quickly changing environment 
• Passion for building products that unlock value for advertisers and customers 
• Experience influencing the Executive Team members on key strategy and cross-functional initiatives
• Experience working at a startup is a plus