Product Manager, Personalization (8 month contract)

Job Description:

Here at Rakuten Kobo Inc. we offer a casual working start-up environment and a group of friendly and talented individuals. Our employees rank us highly in terms of commitment to work/life balance. We realize that for our people to be innovative, creative and passionate they need to feel valued and supported.

If you’re looking for a company that inspires passion, personal, and professional growth – join Kobo and come help us on our mission of making reading lives better.

The Role:

Our Product team is searching for an enthusiastic and data-driven Product Manager to lead the evolution of our eCommerce personalization strategy and recommendation engine. This is a critical 8 month mat-leave contract role for an individual who can quickly make an impact by shaping how customers discover and interact with our vast library of eBooks and audiobooks through highly tailored experiences.

Reporting to the Product Lead, You will be a key contributor, focusing on leveraging user data and machine learning to create intuitive, relevant, and delightful discovery journeys. The ideal candidate has strong experience in driving growth and retention within an eCommerce function, with a proven track record in personalization and recommendation systems. You are diligent, exhibit exceptional attention to detail, a strong communicator, and passionate about doing right by our customers by putting them at the center of their digital reading experience.

You will be part of a diverse and collaborative environment, acting as a key point of contact for R&D and our dedicated Data Team, taking personalization initiatives from idea to reality. Your day-to-day tasks include in-depth research, writing various product documentation, planning initiatives, defining product iterations, managing a product backlog & roadmap focused on personalization features, and rigorously analyzing product performance for continuous improvements. If you’re driven, analytical, creative, organized, adaptable, performance-focused, and able to deliver high-quality work within a fast-paced environment, we want to hear from you. This role is in our Reading Experience team, specifically enhancing our eCommerce experience through intelligent personalization.

Key Responsibilities:

• Own the Personalization Strategy: Define and execute the vision and roadmap for eCommerce personalization, focusing on key areas such as user segmentation, dynamic content, tailored promotions, and the overall customer journey.
• Drive Recommendation Engine Enhancements: Work closely with our Data Team to optimize and evolve our recommendation engine, leveraging GCP-based machine learning models to deliver highly relevant content and product suggestions across the platform.
• User Understanding & Impact: Partner with our UX and research teams to deeply understand user needs and pain points related to discovery. Translate these insights into impactful personalization opportunities that drive business performance (e.g., conversion, AOV, retention).
• Experimentation & Optimization: Design, implement, and analyze A/B tests and other experiments to validate personalization hypotheses, iterating rapidly based on data-driven insights to continuously improve user engagement and business metrics.
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Act as the primary liaison between the Data Team, R&D/Engineering, UX/Design, and Marketing to ensure seamless integration and deployment of personalization features.
• Product Lifecycle Management: Assume end-to-end responsibility for personalization features, from ideation and documentation to prioritization, planning, launch, and post-launch analysis.
• Data Analysis & Reporting: Analyze product performance metrics, user behavior data, and personalization effectiveness to identify opportunities and gaps, and communicate insights to stakeholders.
• Roadmap & Communication: Define and evangelize the personalization roadmap for our eCommerce store, communicating it throughout the organization to gain alignment and prioritization.

The Skillset:

Required:

• 4+ years’ experience working in a Product role, with a significant focus on driving growth and retention for B2C eCommerce products.
• Demonstrated experience in developing and optimizing personalization strategies and/or recommendation engines.
• Strong understanding of machine learning concepts as applied to recommendation systems and user segmentation.
• Experience collaborating closely with Data Science or ML Engineering teams.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms, in the context of data processing or machine learning workflows.
• Outstanding verbal and written communication to various audiences, with the ability to convey insights from complex analysis (especially related to personalization metrics) to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• A track record of identifying important user problems, executing on them with high impact to the users and organization.
• Strong analytical and quantitative skills to deeply understand user behavior, product performance, and personalization effectiveness, identifying opportunities and gaps.
• SQL proficiency (for data exploration and analysis related to personalization).
• Experience working in an Agile software development environment.
• Outstanding organizational skills, self-motivated, creative problem solver with a high attention to detail.
• Dedication to continual self-improvement and learning.
• A love of reading, obviously.

Bonus Points:

• Direct experience with A/B testing frameworks specifically for personalized experiences.

The Perks:

• Flexible hours and hybrid remote working environment
• Subsidized in-office lunches
• Four extended long weekends in the summer
• Free Kobo device + free weekly e-book or audiobook
• Weekly Kobo Spark sessions
• Dog friendly office

About Rakuten Kobo Inc.
Rakuten Kobo Inc. is the world’s digital bookseller created by and for booklovers. Owned by Tokyo-based Rakuten Group, Inc. and headquartered in Toronto, Rakuten Kobo’s millions of worldwide users can read anytime, anywhere, and on any device. With a mission to make reading lives better for all, Rakuten Kobo connects readers to stories using thoughtful and personalized curation of eBooks and audiobooks, and the best dedicated eReaders and apps for reading. With the singular focus of making reading lives the best they can be, Kobo’s open platform allows people to fit reading into more moments in their busy lives. To learn more about Rakuten Kobo, visit www.kobo.com.

Rakuten Kobo Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. Accessibility accommodations for candidates with disabilities participating in the selection process are available on request. Any information received related to accommodation needs of applicants will be addressed confidentially.  

Rakuten Kobo would like to thank all applicants for their interest in this role however only qualified candidates will be shortlisted.  

#RKIND

Five Principles for Success
Our worldwide practices describe specific behaviors that make Rakuten unique and united across the world. We expect Rakuten employees to model these 5 Shugi Principles of Success.
Always improve, Always Advance - Only be satisfied with complete success - Kaizen
Passionately Professional - Take an uncompromising approach to your work and be determined to be the best
Hypothesize - Practice - Validate – Shikumika - Use the Rakuten Cycle to succeed in unknown territory
Maximize Customer Satisfaction - The greatest satisfaction for our teams is seeing their customers smile
Speed!! Speed!! Speed!! - Always be conscious of time - take charge, set clear goals, and engage your team

Rakuten is an equal opportunity employer. Accessibility accommodations for candidates with disabilities participating in the selection process are available on request. Any information received related to accommodation needs of applicants will be addressed confidentially. 

As part of our Rakuten interview process, we encourage applicants to use their own words, rather than AI-generated content. Tell us your story in a way that's personal and authentic.

Rakuten would like to thank all applicants for their interest in this role however only qualified candidates will be shortlisted.

Beware of fraudulent job offers claiming to be from Rakuten. Rakuten does not send unsolicited job offers or request money during the recruitment process. Learn more: https://rakutenemploymentalert.com/

At the time of posting, Rakuten expects the compensation for this role to be within the range shown below. Individual compensation may vary based on job-related factors, including the skills, qualifications, and experience of the successful candidate as well as business need and geographic location. The successful applicant for this role may be eligible for employee benefits as the company implements.