Staff Product Manager, Recommendations Relevance

Company Description
Etsy is the global marketplace for unique and creative goods. We build, power, and evolve the tools and technologies that connect millions of entrepreneurs with millions of buyers around the world. As an Etsy Inc. employee, whether a team member of Etsy or Depop, you will tackle unique, meaningful, and large-scale problems alongside passionate coworkers, all the while making a rewarding impact and Keeping Commerce Human.

What’s the role?

We are looking for a Staff Product Manager to lead one of the machine learning teams within Recs Relevance sub-initiative building ML solutions to address core buyer needs and drive business impact. Recs Relevance rolls up to Etsy’s broader Recommendations initiative, responsible for encouraging buyers to explore new ideas, refine shopping missions and uncover items they’ll love.

This is a full-time position reporting to the Group Product Manager, Recs Relevance. In addition to salary, you will also be eligible for an equity package, an annual performance bonus, and our competitive benefits that support you and your family as part of your total rewards package at Etsy.

For this role, we are considering candidates based in the United States. Candidates living within commutable distance of Etsy’s Brooklyn Office Hub or in the San Francisco Bay Area may be the first to be considered. For candidates within a commutable distance, Etsy requires in-office attendance once or twice per week depending on the proximity to the office. Etsy offers different work modes to meet the variety of needs and preferences of our team. Learn more details about our work modes and workplace safety policies here.

What’s this team like at Etsy?

Recommendations initiative focuses on solving key buyer challenges, including discovering fresh ideas, refining low-clarity shopping missions, and navigating Etsy’s vast collection of unique items from our sellers with ease. As the PM, you will optimize recommendation systems to support three strategic pillars—Personalized Exploration, Shorter Path to Conversion, and Unified Recs Platform—creating inspiring, and delightful shopping experiences that drive customer lifetime value.

What does the day-to-day look like?

Lead all aspects of product management for one of the highest priority areas for 2025:

• Product strategy: Define strategy for your team aligning with the overarching recommendations and personalization product vision using buyer insights, competitive analysis and advancements in ML to prioritize most impactful investments. Drive semi-annual roadmap planning for your squad translating it to quarterly objectives and key results.
• Product delivery: Drive operational excellence through biweekly sprint execution collaborating with ML engineers and scientists to develop and refine core ML models aligning them with product objectives balancing relevance and exploration. Use experimentation to validate relevance improvements.
• Cross-team collaboration: Partner with squads across Etsy to ensure a cohesive buyer experience integrating recommendations seamlessly into the buyer journey. Align dependencies to achieve shared goals efficiently across partner teams like Search and Ads.
• Product leadership and quality craft: Stay informed of groundbreaking ML techniques and opportunities to expand and grow Etsy's Recommendations strategy business impact. Influence the development of a unified scalable platform to deliver consistent and compelling experiences.

Work on exciting and challenging problems such as:

• How might we dynamically optimize the whole page?
• How might we understand the buyer's intent in their shopping mission?
• How might we improve recommendations for international buyers?
• How might we personalize recommendations while protecting user privacy?
• How might we use LLMs / Gen AI to efficiently tackle impactful customer problems?

Of course, this is just a sample of the kinds of work this role will require! You should assume that your role will encompass other tasks as needed and that your job duties and responsibilities may evolve over time.

Qualities that will help you thrive in this role:

• ML expertise: Proven track record (3+ years) of building and optimizing ML-powered products, particularly in recommendations, search, or similar domains. Familiarity with ranking algorithms, retrieval systems and sophisticated personalization techniques is a plus.
• Experimentation proficiency: Strong foundation in A/B testing, including hypothesis formulation, results analysis and iteration to achieve