Director of Product, 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 & Recommendations" 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. This is powered by our knowledge graph, which goes beyond jobs, titles, skills, and companies into the different types of work and professionals, ranging from individuals to teams. We match people to the most personally and financially rewarding opportunities where they can get a leg up in their careers.

You'll manage a team of search PM's and work with our machine learning, design, analyst, and engineering teams to build experiences that allow talent and hiring managers to easily express their capabilities and needs while also allowing teams throughout Upwork to further use the power of search and machine learning through personalization, recommendations, and experience design. You will report to the VP of Product Search

• 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, and several related experiences that further the selection of talent and job opportunities.
• Lead the data standardization team and strategy. This includes the PMs and ontologists responsible for the entire ontology used across Upwork's marketplace.
• Develop your team of PMs in the art of product management and the science of highly performant, delightful search experiences.
• Lead and partner with other product managers, designers, engineers, data scientists, analyst, ontologists, and product marketers to to execute cross-product and initiatives.
• Achieve results and new insights through continuous quantitative tests across the Upwork ecosystem.

• Experience hiring, developing, and leading highly performant search and recommendation teams
• Experience shipping high-quality search and recommendation user experiences: You know how to build simple but effective experiences for complex products and/or data-rich platforms
• Experience partnering or leading taxonomy, ontology, or standardization efforts
• Experience understanding customer needs and working across a variety of teams.
• Passion for Upwork and a deep appreciation of Upwork's mission and impact.
• An understanding of ontology, taxonomy, and data models to hold your own during discussions with technical team members.

Change the world around you.

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, we also hire full-time employees in 19 states in the United States.

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. Oh yeah, we've also got amazing benefits.

Check out our Careers 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.

#LI-Remote