Senior Technical Product Manager, Advertising ML

Xsolla Inc.; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision insurance

Unlimited PTO

Career development opportunities

Job summary

Xsolla Inc. is seeking a Senior Product Manager to own the recommendation engine, ranking quality, and model roadmap for advertising products. You’ll define objectives, constraints, and guardrails, ensuring measurable impact on revenue through precise readouts and cross-functional collaboration.

You’ll work with ML and data platforms, design robust experiments, and guide production deployment of ranking models, with a focus on eCPM, RPU, and monetization in mobile games and apps.

Qualifications

• 6+ years in product management, with 3+ years owning a ranking/relevance system in production.
• Deep understanding of experiment design and inference, including statistical power and A/A testing.
• Hands-on experience with ML and data platforms (Snowflake, BigQuery, Spark, Airflow, dbt, MLFlow, Vertex AI).
• Proven record of moving model changes into production through controlled experiments.
• Knowledge of performance advertising economics and ad tech ecosystems.
• SQL you write yourself and ability to verify claims from data.
• Excellent written communication and stakeholder management across technical/non-technical audiences.
• Bachelor's or Master's in CS/Engineering/Statistics/Economics.
• Experience with Offerwall/rewards/loyalty monetization is a plus.
• Experience with a two-stage ranking system is a plus.
• Pricing/yield management or marketplace experience is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Own the recommendation engine as a product: ranking, relevance, and the model roadmap.
• Set the objective the ranker optimises for, and the guardrails and constraints.
• Own metric definitions and ensure readouts support claims to business stakeholders.
• Collaborate on ML frameworks, experiments, hold-outs, and A/A validation.
• Collaborate with data science on readouts for business stakeholders.
• Contribute ranking perspective to the ads roadmap, including pricing and telemetry seams.

Skills

Ranking systems

Experiment design

ML frameworks

SQL

Stakeholder mgmt

Written communication

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in CS/Engineering/Statistics/Economics

Tools

Snowflake

BigQuery

Spark

Airflow

dbt

MLFlow

Vertex AI

Job description

ABOUT YOU

You are a technical product manager who owns what a model optimises for, not just the roadmap around it. You have real depth in recommendation and ranking systems, and you will own the recommendation engine behind the Xsolla Advertising Products: the ranking that decides which offers millions of players see, and in what order.

You hold the bar high for how decisions get made. You can read a readout and say plainly what it does and does not support. You connect model performance to revenue without overclaiming, and you bring a low-ego, people-first approach to work that spans ML, analytics, ads operations, and commercial teams.

If you are excited about using ML to build building the next generation of advertising, rewards and loyalty programs for mobile apps and games we want to hear from you.

ABOUT US

Xsolla is a global commerce company with robust tools and services to help developers solve the inherent challenges of the video game industry. From indie to AAA, companies partner with Xsolla to help them fund, distribute, market, and monetize their games. Grounded in the belief in the future of video games, Xsolla is resolute in the mission to bring opportunities together, and continually make new resources available to creators. Headquartered and incorporated in Los Angeles, California, Xsolla operates as the merchant of record and has helped over 1,500+ game developers to reach more players and grow their businesses around the world. With more paths to profits and ways to win, developers have all the things needed to enjoy the game.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Own the recommendation engine as a product: ranking, relevance, and the model roadmap. Ranking quality is the product.

Set the objective the ranker optimises for, the constraints it works inside, and the guardrails and kill conditions that bound it. The target is eCPM today; what comes next is your call.

Own the metric definitions the whole team measures against, and settle the definitional questions that change the answer: gross against publisher-side RPU, app-load against impression-user denominators, mean of daily values against window totals.

Collaborate with on ML frameworks, experiment design, hold-outs, including pre-registered decision rules, power calculations, sample-ratio-mismatch checks, A/A validation, multiplicity correction, and named rollback triggers.

Collaborate with DS on readouts to evaluate model performace and readouts to business stakeholders readout: what the model did, what it cost, and what happens next.

Contribute the ranking perspective to the wider ads roadmap, including the seams where pricing, identity, and event telemetry meet ranking.

QUALIFICATIONS & SKILLS

6+ years in product management, with 3+ years owning a recommendation, ranking, personalization, or relevance system in production.

Deep understanding of experiment design and inference, including minimum detectable effect, statistical power, sample ratio mismatch, A/A testing, multiple-comparison correction, and pre-registration. You can tell when a readout will not support the claim being made from it, and you say so.

Working knowledge of the modelling itself: classification and regression, probability calibration, predicted conversion rate, expected-value objectives, and how the choice of objective changes model behavior.

Hands‑on experience with ML and data platforms such as Snowflake, BigQuery, Spark, Airflow, dbt, MLFlow, Vertex AI, and feature stores.

Proven record of moving model changes into production traffic through a controlled experiment process, rather than shipping on a dashboard reading.

Knowledge of performance advertising economics and ad tech ecosystems, including eCPM, RPU, bid multipliers, campaign hierarchies, and attribution models.

SQL you write yourself, and enough comfort reading application code to verify a claim instead of taking it on trust.

Excellent written communication and stakeholder management across technical and non‑technical audiences. Specs, decision records, and readouts are the output of this role, and other teams act on them without you in the room.

Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Engineering, Statistics, Economics, or a related field.

Offerwall, rewarded advertising, loyalty and rewards programs and/or mobile app monetization experience is a plus.

Experience with a two‑stage ranking system, where an external service supplies the base order and local logic adjusts it, is a plus.

Pricing, yield management, or marketplace experience alongside ranking is a plus.

SALARY RANGE

$150,000 - $250,000 a year

BENEFITS

We are passionate about fostering a supportive environment for our team, so we prioritize the physical, mental, and emotional well‑being of our employees and their families through a comprehensive Benefits Program. This includes 100% company‑paid medical, dental, and vision plans, unlimited Flexible Time Off, and a personalized career roadmap for each employee. By investing in professional development through training and educational opportunities, we ensure that our team thrives both personally and professionally. Together, we're not just building a business; we're cultivating a community that values creativity, collaboration, and the transformative power of play.

EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY STATEMENT

Xsolla is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other characteristic protected by law. We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in accordance with the Fair Chance Act.

CRIMINAL HISTORY CONSIDERATION

For the Senior Product Analyst, we will conduct a background check that may include the following:

1. Criminal history check

2. Employment verification 3. Education verification

Relevance to Job Responsibilities: The background check is relevant to this position due to the following role responsibilities:

Accessing confidential company data

RIGHTS UNDER THE FAIR CHANCE ACT

Applicants are encouraged to inquire about their rights under the Fair Chance Act. If you have questions regarding our hiring practices, please contact submitting the following job application form, you consent to Xsolla processing your data for career‑related inquiries and potential employment opportunities. We process your data in accordance with this Xsolla Privacy Notice for Job Applicants. Please direct any inquiries regarding your data privacy to [].

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgement. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.