Product Data Manager- Merchandising

Photon; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Photon seeks an experienced Data Product Manager to own merchandising data products from vision to adoption. You will connect merchant decisions with enterprise data capabilities, driving roadmap, KPIs and data governance on the data platform.

Collaborate with data engineering, analytics, and security to deliver scalable, trusted data solutions. You will lead discovery with cross-functional teams, prioritize capabilities across assortment, pricing, and promotions, and shape product outcomes that

Qualifications

• 5+ years of product management, data product or analytics product experience.
• Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience owning vision, discovery, roadmap, prioritization, requirements and adoption impact.
• Hands-on with Databricks and modern lakehouse concepts, governed data products and pipelines.
• Ability to partner with data engineering, analytics, data science, architecture and security teams.
• Define product outcomes and KPIs, use evidence for prioritization and business communication.
• Knowledge of agile delivery, backlog management, dependencies and change adoption.
• Familiarity with retail merchandising language: assortment, pricing, promotions, margins.

Responsibilities

• Defines the vision and roadmap for merchandising data products tied to business goals.
• Interviews merchants and cross-functional teams to uncover needs and opportunities.
• Prioritizes features across assortment, pricing, promotions and category performance.
• Writes clear product requirements, KPIs and data quality expectations for engineers.
• Partners on data governance, lineage and access controls for merchandising data.
• Plans launch, adoption, and measurement beyond technical release.

Skills

Product management

Data products

Analytics

Databricks

Agile delivery

Cross-functional

Education

Bachelor's degree in related field

Tools

SQL

Python

Job description

For the past 20 years, we have powered many Digital Experiences for the Fortune 500. Since 1999, we have grown from a few people to more than 4000 team members across the globe that are engaged in various Digital Modernization. Our current focus and innovation in Digital Hyper expansion TM offers nearly limitless opportunities for career growth. For a brief 1-minute video about us, you can check out https://youtu.be/uJWBWQZEA6o.

Photon is an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We bring out the best in each other.

Job purpose

Data Product Managers decide what gets built and why for merchandising data products. This role owns the vision, roadmap, prioritization and requirements that turn merchandising problems into trusted, reusable data capabilities on the enterprise data platform. It runs the work through a discovery-to-outcome cycle, from understanding merchant decisions and economics through launch, adoption and measurement. The role is accountable for business outcomes, product adoption, data trust and time to value, not for the volume of dashboards or requirements produced.

Key accountabilities / essential functions

• Defines the vision and roadmap for merchandising data products and connects each investment to a stated merchandising or enterprise objective.
• Runs discovery directly with merchants, category teams, pricing, planning, digital merchandising and adjacent users to understand decisions, workflows, pain points and unmet needs.
• Owns prioritization across competing needs such as assortment, category performance, pricing, promotions, supplier performance, item hierarchy, product content and digital merchandising.
• Defines business rules, canonical concepts, product requirements, acceptance criteria, KPIs and quality expectations clearly enough for data and engineering teams to build and validate.
• Partners with data governance and domain experts to establish trusted definitions, ownership, quality thresholds, lineage and appropriate access for merchandising data.
• Uses Databricks and the enterprise data platform to develop scalable, reusable data products rather than one-off reports or disconnected data extracts.
• Plans launch and adoption beyond technical release, including workflow integration, training, support readiness, communications and product measurement.
• Evaluates opportunities for forecasting, optimization, recommendations, experimentation and AI-enabled merchant decision support.
• Maintains a healthy backlog, exposes dependencies early and drives delivery at a predictable rate while adjusting priorities when evidence or strategy changes.

Scope, impact and decision making

Owns a portfolio of merchandising data products used across business and technology functions. Makes roadmap, scope and sequencing decisions within the product area and recommends investment trade-offs where shared data, platform capacity or business priorities conflict. Impact is measured through adoption, data quality, time to insight and movement in the merchandising outcomes each product is designed to support.

Problem solving and complexity

Merchandising decisions combine incomplete evidence, seasonal or promotional effects, complex hierarchies and competing commercial objectives. The role must distinguish reusable domain capabilities from local reporting requests, resolve inconsistent definitions and choose what to build when several stakeholders have legitimate claims on the same capacity.

Leadership and influence

Leads through product vision, evidence, facilitation and influence rather than direct authority. Creates clarity across business, data, engineering, analytics, architecture, security and change-management partners; makes trade-offs visible; and holds the product team accountable for outcomes and adoption.

Key relationships and communication

• Merchandising and category teams: discovery, product direction, KPI definition, prioritization and adoption.
• Pricing, promotions, planning, finance and digital teams: shared measures, decision workflows, trade-offs and cross-domain dependencies.
• Data engineering, analytics, data science and architecture: product requirements, feasibility, data models, quality, lineage and delivery sequencing.
• Information security, privacy and governance: access, retention, control and responsible AI requirements.

Knowledge, skills and experience

Required qualifications

• 5+ years of relevant product management, data product, analytics product or comparable experience.
• Bachelor's degree in a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience owning product vision, discovery, roadmap, prioritization, requirements, launch readiness, adoption and outcome measurement.
• Hands-on working knowledge of Databricks and modern lakehouse concepts, including governed data products, pipelines, semantic layers, data quality, lineage and self-service consumption.
• Ability to partner effectively with data engineering, analytics, data science, architecture, security, privacy and business teams.
• Ability to define product outcomes and KPIs, use evidence to make prioritization decisions and communicate complex data topics in business language.
• Working knowledge of agile product delivery, backlog management, dependency planning and change adoption.
• Working knowledge of retail merchandising language and economics, including assortment, category management, pricing, promotions, item hierarchy, product lifecycle, supplier performance and margin.

Ways of working

• Keeping member and business value the deciding factor when scope pressure would cut it first.
• Building consensus across functions that have no reporting line to each other.
• Changing direction when evidence shows an approach is not working rather than continuing because of sunk cost.
• Holding commitments across concurrent workstreams and communicating early when constraints require a trade-off.
• Holding data products to ethical, privacy, security, quality and governance standards under pressure to ship.

Preferred qualifications

• Retail, wholesale club, grocery or consumer commerce experience.
• Experience with merchandising analytics, demand forecasting, product information, pricing or promotion optimization.
• Experience introducing AI/ML capabilities into merchant workflows and measuring adoption and value.