Director of Product - Yahoo Search

Yahoo serves as a trusted guide for hundreds of millions of people globally, helping them achieve their goals online through our portfolio of iconic products. For advertisers, Yahoo Advertising offers omnichannel solutions and powerful data to engage with our brands and deliver results.

About the Role

As the Director of Product for Sports & Entertainment, you will define and execute the strategy for two high-impact and high-traffic verticals within Yahoo Search. Reporting directly to the Senior Director of Product for Search Verticals & Growth, you will lead the vision and roadmap to create compelling, authoritative, and engaging experiences for millions of users seeking sports and entertainment content every day.

This is a senior individual contributor (IC) role focused on product strategy and execution, requiring strong cross-functional leadership and influence across engineering, design, editorial, data science, and business teams.

Sports is a mission-critical property for Yahoo, with Yahoo Sports representing a cornerstone of the company’s brand and ecosystem. From the Super Bowl and March Madness to the Olympics, global soccer tournaments, tennis majors, golf championships, and fantasy sports, these tentpole moments drive massive search traffic and engagement year-round. Entertainment, spanning celebrities, movies, TV, music, and cultural moments — similarly generates sustained, high-volume search interest and real-time spikes tied to news, premieres, interviews, and live events.

You will own the end-to-end product vision for these verticals across Yahoo Search, building rich, dynamic experiences that satisfy high-intent queries, deepen engagement, and support monetization opportunities. This is a strategic, high-visibility role that blends user empathy, technical depth, and business impact. The ideal candidate brings strong experience in search products, a passion for sports and entertainment, and a track record of shipping high-quality consumer experiences at scale.

What You’ll Do:

• Define and own the product vision, strategy, and roadmap for Sports & Entertainment search experiences, aligning with Yahoo Search’s long-term goals and Yahoo’s broader content ecosystem.

• Build engaging, real-time, and content-rich front-end experiences that help users quickly access scores, stats, schedules, standings, fantasy insights, athlete and celebrity profiles, breaking news, and event coverage.

• Work with cross-functional teams (engineering, design, ML, data science, editorial, partnerships, and monetization) to deliver innovative vertical search features that improve relevance, engagement, and retention.

• Develop strategies to capitalize on tentpole events (e.g., Super Bowl, March Madness, World Cup, Olympics, Oscars, Grammies, etc.) and recurring sports seasons across NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, college football and basketball, soccer, tennis, golf, and partner with editorial teams to manage and upgrade these experiences.

• Partner closely with search relevance and ML teams to enhance intent understanding, ranking, and real-time content surfacing for sports and entertainment queries.

• Leverage data, experimentation frameworks, and user research to define and track key KPIs such as engagement, task completion, query success, traffic growth, and monetization impact.

• Serve as the product thought leader for Sports & Entertainment within Yahoo Search, influencing executive stakeholders and aligning teams around a unified strategy.

Minimum Qualifications:

• 10+ years of product management experience, with at least 4+ years in search, content platforms, or high-scale consumer products.

• Experience shipping front-end consumer experiences (web and/or mobile), with a solid understanding of backend systems that power real-time data and content delivery.

• Direct experience working on search products, search UX, or query-driven systems with a strong understanding of user intent and relevance.

• Deep passion for and knowledge of sports and/or entertainment, including familiarity with major leagues (NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL), college sports, global soccer, tennis, golf, fantasy sports, and key entertainment domains (film, TV, music, celebrity culture).

• Strong analytical and data-driven decision-making skills; ability to define metrics, run experiments, and translate insights into product improvements.

• Proven ability to lead cross-functional initiatives and influence stakeholders across engineering, design, editorial, and business teams.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience building or optimizing vertical search experiences (e.g., sports, news, entertainment, finance, travel).

• Familiarity with ML/AI technologies such as ranking systems, entity extraction, personalization, embeddings, LLM integration, or real-time data pipelines (nice to have, not required).

• Experience working with structured data domains (e.g., scores, stats, schedules, event data, knowledge graphs).

• Track record of delivering products tied to major live events or real-time content cycles.

Why Yahoo?

Yahoo is reimagining search around AI, intelligent discovery, trusted content, and task completion. Sports and Entertainment are foundational to that vision, driving some of the highest traffic, deepest engagement, and most culturally relevant moments across the platform.

As Director of Product for Sports & Entertainment, you will play a pivotal role in shaping how millions of users experience their favorite teams, athletes, celebrities, and cultural events, delivering real-time, authoritative, and innovative search experiences at scale.

The material job duties and responsibilities of this role include those listed above as well as adhering to Yahoo policies; exercising sound judgment; working effectively, safely and inclusively with others; exhibiting trustworthiness and meeting expectations; and safeguarding business operations and brand integrity.

At Yahoo, we offer flexible hybrid work options that our employees love! While most roles don’t require regular office attendance, you may occasionally be asked to attend in-person events or team sessions. You’ll always get notice to make arrangements. Your recruiter will let you know if a specific job requires regular attendance at a Yahoo office or facility. If you have any questions about how this applies to the role, just ask the recruiter!

Yahoo is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to, and will not be discriminated against based on age, race, gender, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, disability or any other protected category. Yahoo will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable law. Yahoo is dedicated to providing an accessible environment for all candidates during the application process and for employees during their employment. If you need accessibility assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability, please submit a request via the Accommodation Request Form (www.yahooinc.com/careers/contact-us.html) or call +1.866.772.3182. Requests and calls received for non-disability related issues, such as following up on an application, will not receive a response.

We believe that a diverse and inclusive workplace strengthens Yahoo and deepens our relationships. When you support everyone to be their best selves, they spark discovery, innovation and creativity. Among other efforts, our 11 employee resource groups (ERGs) enhance a culture of belonging with programs, events and fellowship that help educate, support and create a workplace where all feel welcome.

The compensation for this position ranges from $150,380.00 - $327,025.00/yr and will vary depending on factors such as your location, skills and experience.The compensation package may also include incentive compensation opportunities in the form of discretionary annual bonus or commissions. Our comprehensive benefits include healthcare, a great 401k, backup childcare, education stipends and much (much) more.

Currently work for Yahoo? Please apply on our internal career site.