Product Manager, Search and Discovery

Upwork ($UPWK) is the world’s work marketplace. We serve everyone from one-person startups to over 30% of the Fortune 100 with a powerful, trust-driven platform that enables companies and talent to work together in new ways that unlock their potential.  

Last year, more than $3.3 billion of work was done through Upwork by skilled professionals who are gaining more control by finding work they are passionate about and innovating their careers. 

“Search & Discovery” team’s vision is to become the best place for businesses and independent talent to find and engage with each other. We have a charter to match talent to opportunities and businesses to talent with the world’s most comprehensive understanding of what makes for successful work.  We match people to the most personally and financially rewarding opportunities where they can get a leg up in their careers. 

In this role, you’ll work closely with our machine learning, design, research, analyst, and engineering teams to build experiences that enable talent and hiring managers to easily express their capabilities and needs. You will focus on driving improvements of the relevant results to user searches by identifying and tuning multiple factors, including user behavior, product diversity, desirability and business logics. You will influence teams throughout Upwork to further leverage the power of search and machine learning through query understanding, ranking and experience design. 

This team is not only the biggest growth driver but also a ground for innovation. On one hand, we are investing in short-term wins and on the other betting on the future of the World’s Work marketplace and Technology.

Your Responsibilities:

• As Product Manager, you will work in the product model and will partner with stakeholders across Upwork to develop a comprehensive product strategy, related roadmap, and set key business objectives (OKRs) for your product team
• Lead the implementation, metrics, and user experience for search and recommendations. This includes the core search experiences in Upwork’s marketplace for both hiring managers and talent, as well as a number of related experiences that further the selection of talent and job opportunities.
• Experience leading company-wide initiatives with diverse stakeholders and executive visibility, and managing products through the full product lifecycle.
• You will encourage the open exchange of information and viewpoints, as well as inspire others to achieve challenging goals and high standards of performance while committing to the organization's direction. 
• You’ll deeply understand and seek key trends in the broader landscape and the specific needs and mentalities of customers on both sides of the marketplace.
• Lead and partner with other product managers, designers, engineers, data scientists, analyst, and product marketers to to execute cross-product and cross-functional initiatives.
• Drive proven results and new insights through continuous quantitative tests across the Upwork ecosystem.

What it takes to catch our eye:

• Experience shipping high quality search and recommendation end to end user experiences: You know how to build simple but effective experiences for complex products and/or data rich platforms
• Prior experience with building products using AI/ML and with knowledge graph
• Storyteller with the ability to establish rapport, credibility, and influence in a highly cross-functional, matrix organization across geographies
• A consistent track record of understanding customer needs and working across a variety of functional teams.
• Ability to interact with and understand technical subjects, emerging technologies and evangelize with leaders across the company. Can easily work with technical vendors for graph databases and other needs.
• Excellent communication skills: You have a strong executive presence for collaborating with customers, peers, colleagues, and executives. You can distill differing philosophies and approaches down to the essence and corral partners toward alignment. You can succinctly articulate goals, progress, and priorities in written, verbal, and presentation formats.
• Passion for Upwork and a deep appreciation of Upwork’s mission and impact.

The annual base salary for this position in California and Washington ranges from $124,000.00 - $206,000.00. The range displayed reflects the minimum and maximum salary for this position in California and Washington, and individual base pay will depend on your skills, qualifications, experience, and location. Additionally, this position is eligible for the annual bonus plan or sales incentive plan and eligibility to participate in our long term equity incentive program.

Come change how the world works.

At Upwork, you’ll shape talent solutions for how the world works today. We are a remote-first organization working together to create exciting remote work opportunities for a global community of professionals.  While we have physical offices in San Francisco and Chicago, currently we also support hiring of corporate full-time employees in 19 states in the United States. Please speak with a member of our recruitment team to determine whether you are located in a state in which we are hiring corporate full-time employees. 

Our vibrant culture is built on shared values and our mission to create economic opportunities so that people have better lives. We foster amazing teams, put our community first, and have a bias toward action. We encourage everyone to bring their whole selves to work and grow together through development opportunities, mentorship, and employee resource groups. And oh yeah, we've also got amazing benefits - including medical insurance for you and your family, unlimited PTO, 401(k) with matching, 12 weeks of paid parental leave, and a generous Employee Stock Purchase Plan. Check out our Life at Upwork page to learn more about our benefits and the employee experience.

Check out our Life at Upwork page to learn more about the employee experience.   

Upwork is proudly committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse and inclusive workforce. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, we never discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical condition), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.