Senior Product Manager - (Search & Recommendation)

Twinkl Educational Publishing; Sheffield; Hybrid; GBP 80,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible working

Remote & hybrid options

33 days annual leave

Learning and Development opportunities

Life assurance 4x annual salary

Job summary

Twinkl Educational Publishing is seeking a Senior Product Manager for Search & Recommendation to own the strategy, discovery and execution of core product experiences that help educators find resources. You will lead hybrid retrieval, optimize natural language queries, and drive personalization across Twinkl's resource library.

You will work with engineers, data scientists, designers and researchers to deliver data-driven solutions that improve conversion, engagement and retention, while guiding

Qualifications

• 5+ years in Product Management, with 3+ years in search, retrieval, ranking, NLP or recommendations.
• Proven collaboration with Data Scientists and ML engineers on data-driven products.
• Fluent understanding of search algorithms, relevance and personalization systems.
• Bachelor's or Master's in a technical field is required.

Responsibilities

• Define long-term vision and strategy for Search & Recommendation aligned with company goals.
• Lead hybrid retrieval engine for AI-powered solutions across a 1M+ asset library.
• Drive discovery, planning, execution and post-launch optimization of features.
• Collaborate with Engineering, Data Science and UX to improve metrics and experience.
• Manage KPIs, run A/B tests, and ensure accurate tracking with BI teams.

Skills

Product Management

Search & Information Retrieval

NLP & Recommendations

Data-Driven Decision Making

Stakeholder Communication

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in CS/Engineering/Data Science

Tools

Elastic/OpenSearch

Dense Vector (HNSW)

RAG evaluation (TruLens)

Knowledge Graphs

Job description

Location: Remote with visits to our Sheffield HQ a minimum of 6 times a year

The Role

The Senior Product Manager for Search & Recommendation will lead the strategy, discovery, and execution for the core product experiences that help our users find what they need and discover educational resources. This role is critical to the user experience and business growth, directly impacting conversion, engagement, and retention metrics. You will own the vision for our search algorithms, relevancy ranking, personalized recommendations, and overall information retrieval capabilities. You will work closely with a dedicated team of engineers, data scientists, product designers, and user researchers to deliver world-class, data-driven solutions for educators.

What will the role involve?

• Define and champion the long‑term product vision and strategy for the Search and Recommendation product domain, ensuring alignment with overall company objectives.
• Lead the hybrid retrieval engine behind Twinkl’s evolving AI‑powered solutions, optimizing how natural language queries route across Twinkl’s 1M+ human asset library, live adaptation tools, and generative workflows.
• Deeply understand customer needs, market trends, and competitive landscapes to identify new opportunities for innovation in discovery and personalization.
• Establish a clear roadmap, setting measurable goals and success metrics (e.g., search precision, recall, conversion rate uplift, engagement).

2. Discovery & Execution

• Lead the entire product development lifecycle from ideation and discovery through planning, execution, and post‑launch optimization.
• Partner with Product Managers to architect search APIs for evolving AI solutions that leverage natural language processing, visual/structured filters, and behavioral data for personalized results.
• Drive collaborative filtering and profile‑level vector representations across web/mobile.
• Partner with Engineering and Data Science to define technical requirements and trade‑offs for algorithms, machine learning models, and complex data infrastructure supporting search relevancy and personalisation.
• Maintain a well‑groomed and prioritised backlog, ensuring the team is consistently focused on the highest‑impact initiatives.

3. Data-Driven Optimization

• Guard against “fake wins” in vector search; map ML metrics (Groundedness, Context Recall, NDCG) to business KPIs (search-to‑download, abandonment).
• Own and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) related to search and recommendation performance, including relevancy metrics, query success rates, and user behavior flows.
• Drive rigorous A/B testing and experimentation to validate hypotheses, iterate on features, and continuously improve core metrics.
• Leverage quantitative data, qualitative user research, and competitive analysis to inform product decisions and identify areas for algorithmic improvement.
• Work closely with Data Science and BI teams to ensure accurate tracking, reporting, and analysis of all search and recommendation experiences.

4. Cross-Functional Leadership & Communication

• Act as the primary subject matter expert for Search & Recommendation, effectively communicating product strategy, progress, and results to executive stakeholders and cross‑functional teams.
• Collaborate closely with product design to create seamless, intuitive interfaces and integrate recommendation into the user journey across multiple products.
• Partner with Research, Marketing, Sales, and Customer Support to ensure successful go‑to‑market strategies and gather holistic feedback on product performance.

What do we need from you?

• 5+ years of experience in Product Management, with at least 3 years directly focused on search, information retrieval, ranking, NLP, recommendation systems.
• Proven experience working closely with Data Scientists and Machine Learning engineers on developing and deploying complex, data‑driven products.
• Deep technical fluency in how search algorithms, relevancy models, and personalization systems (e.g., collaborative filtering, deep learning models) function and are evaluated.
• Deep technical fluency in core ML systems such as Hybrid Retrieval/RAG (Elastic, OpenSearch, dense vector/HNSW), LLM evaluation frameworks (Ragas, TruLens), Curriculum Knowledge Graphs, and EdTech AI Safety.
• Proven experience to drive customer analysis and own the end‑to‑end customer experience, from inception to delivery and subsequent evolution.
• Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills, with expertise in defining KPIs, conducting A/B tests, and synthesizing quantitative data to drive product decisions.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with a track record of presenting complex technical concepts and product strategies to a diverse audience.
• Experience working in a high‑scale, consumer‑facing or e‑commerce environment.
• Familiarity with modern search technologies and cloud‑based ML/AI platforms. Particularly, building event‑driven systems using external context signals.
• Familiarity with EdTech‑specific AI safety guardrails (hallucination mitigation, pedagogical accuracy, adversarial prompting, etc.).
• A strong sense of ownership and a bias for action, coupled with the ability to manage ambiguity and rapidly evolving priorities.
• Experience with Digital Transformation program and transition of legacy systems
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or a related technical field.

What’s in it for you?

• A friendly, welcoming and supportive culture. We believe work should be fun and always put people before process
• Flexible working with fully remote and hybrid working options
• 33 days annual leave per year, pro rata. You decide which public holidays to recognise. After 2 years of employment, your annual leave entitlement will accrue year on year up to 38 days annual leave
• An additional day of annual leave, a Me Day, to take time for yourself
• Charity day to volunteer and support a registered charity of your choice
• Westfield Health (including Health Club discount and Westfield Rewards discount and cashback)
• Learning and Development opportunities, with opportunities for internal mobility across various departments / areas of the business
• 4 x annual salary death in service life assurance
• Enhanced parental and adoption leave after long service
• Quarterly awards designed to reward and recognise our wonderful Twinkl employees