Search Experience Manager

Digi-Key Corporation; Thief River Falls (MN); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

DigiKey is seeking a Search Experience Manager to define, optimize, and evolve how customers discover products across its digital experiences. You will own the search and discovery roadmap, aligning with UX, Analytics, and Engineering to improve findability, relevance, and customer confidence.

This hybrid role requires weekly onsite presence to drive strategy and execution. Responsibilities include leading end-to-end discovery improvements, integrating AI-assisted features, and partnering with

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in eCommerce, search, merchandising, customer experience, B2B distribution, electronic components, or related field.
• Strong understanding of electronic components, engineering workflows, and how engineers research, evaluate, and select products.
• Knowledge of how customers discover products through search, navigation, filtering, content, tools, and digital experiences.
• Ability to identify customer pain points and opportunities to improve digital experiences.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills leveraging data, feedback, and insights.
• Experience working cross-functionally with business, technical, and customer-facing teams.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Ability to balance customer needs, business objectives, and technical considerations.
• Curiosity and continuous improvement mindset focused on simplifying complex experiences.
• Associate degree (two-year) in business, engineering, marketing or related field.

Responsibilities

• Define the Product Discovery Vision.
• Develop and maintain the strategic roadmap for DigiKey's search and discovery experience.
• Establish a long-term vision for how customers find products, technical information, tools, and resources.
• Champion initiatives that reduce customer effort and improve findability across digital experiences.
• Monitor market trends, customer behavior, and industry best practices in search and eCommerce.
• Advocate for customer-centric solutions that simplify the journey from problem to product selection.
• Identify opportunities to improve product discovery through relevance, UX, navigation, personalization, content integration, and AI-assisted experiences.
• Lead strategy for incorporating natural language search and emerging technologies.
• Partner with UX, Analytics, and Engineering to design, test, and validate new discovery experiences.
• Develop experimentation plans and success metrics for new search and discovery capabilities.
• Identify opportunities to leverage external solutions that improve outcomes and accelerate innovation.
• Define and maintain search quality standards including relevance, recall, precision, and result effectiveness.
• Collaborate with Analytics and Data Science to develop measurement frameworks and monitoring.

Skills

eCommerce experience

Search optimization

Merchandising

Customer experience

B2B distribution

Electronic components

Cross-functional collaboration

Analytical skills

Stakeholder management

Strategic thinking

Education

Associate degree

Tools

Analytics tools

A/B testing

Natural language processing

Job description

DigiKey is one of the fastest growing distributors of electronic components in the world. In addition to offering the broadest selection of in-stock electronic components and providing the best service possible to customers, employees have access to a highly competitive benefits package. To learn more, visit our benefits and perks page .

Position Overview:

The Search Experience Manager is responsible for defining, optimizing, and evolving how customers discover products and information across DigiKey's digital experiences. This role serves as the business owner for search and product discovery, leading the strategy, roadmap, and prioritization of capabilities that help customers find the right component quickly, confidently, and with minimal effort.

The role is focused on improving the end-to-end discovery experience through search relevance, navigation, user experience enhancements, experimentation, content discovery, and emerging technologies. Working closely with Product, Engineering, UX, Analytics, Data Science, Merchandising, and technical subject matter experts, the Search Experience Manager identifies opportunities to reduce customer effort and improve decision-making throughout the research and purchasing journey.

This position owns the search and discovery roadmap, including search relevance, ranking and sort strategies, query understanding, autocomplete, faceted navigation, filtering, content discovery, AI-assisted experiences, vendor evaluation, and continuous optimization programs. AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) are an important part of the long-term strategy and are considered alongside other approaches that improve how customers find, evaluate, and select products.

The Search Experience Manager is responsible for ensuring DigiKey remains the fastest and easiest place in the industry to find electronic components, whether through better search experiences, improved usability, richer content connections, or new technologies that simplify product discovery.

This is a hybrid position; regular weekly onsite attendance will be required.

Responsibilities:

• Define the Product Discovery Vision
• Develop and maintain the strategic roadmap for DigiKey's search and discovery experience.
• Establish a long-term vision for how customers find products, technical information, tools, and supporting resources.
• Champion initiatives that reduce customer effort and improve findability across digital experiences.
• Monitor market trends, customer behavior, and industry best practices related to search, discovery, and eCommerce.
• Advocate for customer-centric solutions that simplify the journey from problem identification to product selection.
• Drive Search and Discovery Innovation
• Identify and evaluate opportunities to improve product discovery through search relevance, UX enhancements, navigation improvements, personalization, content integration, and AI-assisted experiences.
• Lead DigiKey's strategy for incorporating natural language search, and emerging technologies where they improve customer outcomes.
• Partner with UX, Analytics, and Engineering teams to design, test, and validate new discovery experiences.
• Develop experimentation plans and success metrics for new search and discovery capabilities.
• Identify opportunities to leverage external solutions that improve customer outcomes and accelerate innovation.
• Define and maintain search quality standards including relevance, recall, precision, and result effectiveness.
• Partner with Analytics and Data Science teams to develop measurement frameworks and ongoing monitoring.

Required Knowledge, Skills, and Experience

• 8+ years of experience in eCommerce, search, merchandising, customer experience, B2B distribution, electronic components, or a related field.
• Strong understanding of electronic components, engineering workflows, and the processes engineers use to research, evaluate, and select products.
• Knowledge of how customers discover products through search, navigation, filtering, technical content, tools, and other digital experiences.
• Demonstrated ability to identify customer pain points and opportunities to improve digital experiences.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to leverage data, customer feedback, and business insights to inform decisions.
• Experience working cross-functionally with business, technical, and customer-facing teams.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Ability to balance customer needs, business objectives, and technical considerations when making recommendations and prioritization decisions.
• Curiosity and a continuous improvement mindset focused on making complex experiences simpler and more intuitive for customers.
• Associate degree (two-year degree) in business, engineering, marketing or related field

Preferred

12+ years of experience in eCommerce, search, merchandising, customer experience, B2B distribution, electronic