Senior Product Manager, Machine Learning, Ads

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.

Salary Range:

$164,000.00 - $212,000.00

What’s the role?

Etsy is looking for a Senior Product Manager to lead product strategy and delivery for Etsy's promoted recommendation experiences. The team’s work starts with a simple but demanding question: when a buyer is considering what to explore next, is the promoted listing we show a genuinely useful option?
 

You will partner with engineering, applied science, analytics, and research to improve matching quality while protecting the buyer experience and creating sustainable business value. The immediate focus is promoted recommendations, but this is not a role that simply delivers a pre-set model roadmap.

You will help identify the customer problems worth solving, determine how machine learning can help, and make evidence-based product decisions as the team’s priorities evolve.

This is a full-time position reporting to the [manager’s job title]. 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 may be the first to be considered. For candidates within commutable distance, Etsy requires in-office attendance once or twice per week depending on your 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?

Etsy Ads is used by sellers of all sizes to grow their businesses and is one of Etsy’s major revenue streams. The Ads team works across buyer experience, seller tools, relevance, and core Ads systems, including ML-informed decisioning, pacing, forecasting, and marketplace infrastructure that directly shape Ads performance end-to-end.

Product Managers at Etsy are full members of their teams, working side by side with engineers (full-stack and machine learning), applied scientists, and analysts to reason about system behavior, tradeoffs, and impact.

PMs do not hand work over a wall; instead, they are in continuous conversation with their teams to explore problems, test ideas, and refine solutions together.
The work is collaborative, iterative, and grounded in learning from real customer and system behavior.

What does the day-to-day look like?

• Set product direction and a sequenced roadmap for retrieval and ranking capabilities in promoted recommendation experiences, starting from buyer needs rather than a pre-set technical solution.

• Develop a deep understanding of the buyer’s decision-making journey, the recommendation experience, relevant data, and the business context to identify problems worth solving.

• Partner closely with machine learning engineers, applied scientists, analysts, and researchers to define customer problems, assumptions, model objectives, and evaluation plans.

• Lead discovery and experimentation using offline evidence, online experiments, and user research to make informed stop, pivot, or scale decisions.

• Improve the system’s ability to retrieve and rank relevant promoted listings using listing, buyer, session, and behavioral signals while accounting for technical and marketplace constraints.

• Work across Etsy to help unify organic and promoted recommendation experiences through shared capabilities.

• Stay engaged through delivery, translating complex system behavior into clear product decisions, tradeoffs, and priorities.

• Protect buyer quality and marketplace trust by evaluating whole-page and customer outcomes, not only isolated metrics.

• 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, too, and that your job duties and responsibilities may change from time to time at Etsy's discretion, or otherwise applicable with local law.

Qualities that will help you thrive in this role are:

• 5+ years of product management experience, including ownership of a complex product area or portfolio.

• Meaningful product experience with machine learning retrieval and ranking systems. Experience in recommendations or search is strongly preferred.

• Experience partnering directly with machine learning engineers, applied scientists, data scientists, and analysts on a production ML product.

• Ability to begin with a customer problem and connect model behavior, product metrics, and experiment results to customer and business outcomes.

• Strong judgment about the difference between a model or offline-metric improvement and a change that creates meaningful customer value.

• Experience surfacing assumptions, designing proportionate tests, and changing direction when evidence disagrees.

• Strong cross-functional communication and the ability to rally teams around shared outcomes and resolve tradeoffs.

• Experience with advertising, marketplaces, or other two-sided platforms is a plus.

Additional Information
 

What's Next
If you're interested in joining the team at Etsy, please share your resume with us and feel free to include a cover letter if you'd like. As we hope you've seen already, Etsy is a place that values individuality and variety. We don't want you to be like everyone else -- we want you to be like you! So tell us what you're all about.
 
Our Promise
At Etsy, we believe that a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace furthers relevance, resilience, and longevity. We encourage people from all backgrounds, ages, abilities, and experiences to apply. Etsy is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. If, due to a disability, you need an accommodation during any part of the application or interview process, please let your recruiter know. While Etsy supports visa sponsorship, sponsorship opportunities may be limited to certain roles and skills.