Principal Product Manager - Search & Discovery

As our journalism spans an ever-growing archive and range of formats, helping audiences find, explore and understand our content within our products is central to delivering long-term value. Search and discovery are not simply navigational utilities, but core expressions of how our journalism is structured, explained and trusted. 

We are seeking an experienced and highly capable Principal Product Manager to lead Search & Discovery across The Economist’s web and app products. This role brings together responsibility for how users actively find content through search and how they browse, explore and build reading habits through discovery. 

This role is ideal for someone who is both strategic and hands-on - someone who can set a clear vision for a complex, editorially-grounded product area while also driving measurable improvements to engagement, satisfaction and long-term subscriber value. 

The role 

The Principal Product Manager for Search & Discovery will own how users find, explore and navigate The Economist’s journalism within our own products across web and app. 

This is a senior role responsible for the on-platform representation of our content: the structures, systems and experiences that help readers interrogate our archive, browse confidently and deepen their understanding. This includes keyword and semantic search, navigation patterns, ranking and surfacing logic, browse-led personalisation and content recommendation, and conversational discovery experiences that allow users to ask questions of our journalism and receive clear, trustworthy responses. 

Search & Discovery is fundamentally about direct user intent. When readers arrive with questions or curiosity, this role ensures they can efficiently find relevant, authoritative journalism — whether through search results, recommendations, navigational pathways or conversational interfaces — and understand how stories relate across topics, time and formats. 

The role will lead on the creation of generative AI features such as Q&A, content summarisation, explainer and synthesis experiences, and other conversational interfaces that help users understand, explore and connect our journalism. Essential to this work will be ensuring we have the right evaluation frameworks and human-in-the-loop to build experiences that are grounded in the human trust and trust integral to our brand.

You will work closely with Editorial, Design, Engineering and Data Science and operate as a senior product leader with influence across multiple product areas. Over time, this domain may grow to include more junior product support as scope and impact expand. 

Responsibilities 

• Own the vision and roadmap for Search & Discovery across web and app.
• Define how The Economist’s journalism is structured, indexed and represented for on-platform discovery. 
• Lead the evolution of keyword and semantic search, including relevance, ranking and result quality. 
• Own browse-led discovery and personalisation systems, including recommendations and ranking logic that support habit formation without narrowing perspectives. 
• Establish clear principles for editorial authority, transparency and explainability in search and discovery experiences. 
• Partner closely with Editorial teams to ensure discovery reflects journalistic judgement, trust and breadth, and making the right evaluation and feedback loops. 
• Work with data science on the definition, evaluation and iteration of ranking and recommendation models and signals. 
• Collaborate closely with Web and App teams to ensure consistent, high-quality implementation of search and discovery experiences. 
• Define and track success metrics related to findability, exploration depth, relevance, satisfaction, habit formation and trust. 
• Communicate strategy, priorities and performance clearly to senior stakeholders across product, editorial and technology. 

Who you are

• Builder: You have owned and shipped complex search, discovery, recommendation or navigation systems in content-rich products. 
• Product-led: Strong judgement in defining strategy, translating it into roadmaps, and delivering outcomes through cross-functional teams. 
• Data-informed: Comfortable working with data scientists on ML-driven systems, evaluation frameworks and experimentation. 
• Editorially-aware: Confident balancing user intent, algorithmic optimisation and editorial integrity.
• Listener: Adept at understanding the needs of editorial, engineering, design and senior business stakeholders. 
• Communicator: Able to explain complex systems and trade-offs clearly to technical and non-technical audiences. 
• Pragmatic: A bias for focused, high-impact delivery in lean teams, balancing ambition with operational realities. 
• Humble and collaborative: Comfortable learning, iterating and working across disciplines in a fast-moving environment. 

Domain knowledge 

• Search and discovery systems, including semantic retrieval, ranking and evaluation.
• Browse-led personalisation, behavioural signals and experimentation.
• Generative AI and conversational best-practices. 
• Metrics for discovery quality, relevance, user understanding and trust.
• Experience with subscription or habit-forming digital products. 
• Enthusiasm for The Economist’s mission, journalism and global audience.

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