Senior Manager, Digital Search & Discovery

Staples is business to business. You’re what binds us together.

Our eCommerce team strives to showcase Staples’ value proposition and experience to customers through digital vehicles, including SEO, paid search, display affiliates, paid social media and more. We utilize online merchandising and campaigns executed by both humans and automated tools to convert new and returning website visitors into customers. Our team also ensures that our mobile and desktop websites and apps are easy to use, delivering the digital experience that our customers expect. At the same time, our teams focus on building and executing a strong innovation pipeline for the future. We work end-to-end with our sales, merchandising, finance, logistics and technology teams to provide a world-class, holistic digital experience, growing profitable results in a fun and rewarding work environment.

The Sr Manager, Digital Search & Discovery is responsible for owning and optimizing the on-site search experience across the company’s digital platforms. This role plays a critical part in driving user engagement, task completion, and product discovery by improving search recall and relevance. The Sr Manager will collaborate cross-functionally with engineering, product, analytics, marketing, and merchandising teams, as well as external platform vendors, to implement AI-powered enhancements and deliver a high-quality, intuitive search experience that aligns with business goals.

What you’ll be doing:

• Own the performance and optimization of the on-site search experience across staples.com and staplesadvantage.com, with a focus on improving search recall & relevance and driving engagement.
• Partner with vendor partners, product managers, engineers, and data analysts to optimize search algorithms, autocomplete logic, filters, and redirects to improve task completion and reduce search abandonment.
• Collaborate with merchandising and marketing teams to ensure priority SKUs, categories, and promotional content are discoverable through site search without compromising customer relevance.
• Work closely with tagging, product content, and data teams to identify and resolve metadata gaps, attribute mismatches, and inconsistent naming conventions impacting search accuracy.
• Monitor and analyze key search performance indicators, including click depth, search reformulation rates, abandonment rates, and time to task completion; provide actionable insights based on trends.
• Guide the audit and rationalization of legacy manual search rules and overrides to allow AI-driven ranking models to surface the most relevant results.
• Support the rollout of AI-based search enhancements, including synonym mapping, unit normalization, and intent-driven ranking; partner with platform vendors where applicable.
• Coordinate with engineering to ensure search platform functionality is not disrupted by product or technical changes; raise SEO/search-related risks early in the development cycle.
• Participate in testing and validation of new features, templates, and product pages to ensure they meet usability and search experience best practices.
• Help develop frameworks to balance monetization (e.g., sponsored listings) with organic relevance, ensuring customer experience is preserved in high-value journeys.
• Communicate clearly and effectively with stakeholders across departments to advocate for the role of intelligent search in customer satisfaction, product discovery, and revenue growth.
• Stay informed on-site search trends, tools, and best practices, and contribute to a culture of continuous learning, testing, and iteration around the customer search journey.

What you bring to the table:

• Hands-on experience working with site search platforms (e.g., Algolia, Bloomreach, Elasticsearch) and a solid understanding of how ranking, filtering, and synonym logic shape the user experience.
• Strong analytical mindset with proficiency in tools like Adobe Analytics, Google Analytics, Looker, or Tableau; comfortable analyzing data trends and surfacing actionable insights.
• Familiarity with metadata structures, product tagging, and taxonomy systems, and how they impact findability and customer search journeys.
• Comfort working cross-functionally with product managers, engineers, merchandisers, and marketers; able to speak the language of both business and tech.
• Curiosity and initiative—constantly looking for ways to improve the experience, reduce friction, and test new ideas grounded in data and user behavior.
• Clear, confident communicator who can translate technical or analytical findings into simple, compelling recommendations.
• A passion for helping customers find what they need—faster, smarter, and with less frustration.
• Excellent written and verbal communication