Principal Product Manager (Minneapolis, MN, US, 55401)

We're not here to add to the noise. We're here to cut through it- with AI that actually works for marketers.

From AI-powered content creation to world-class CMS and the industry's most trusted experimentation platform, Optimizely is the tool modern marketers actually want to use. AI-Ready. Set. Go.

10,000+ brands including H&M, PayPal, and Zoom already get it. So do Gartner, Forrester, and IDC, who consistently recognize us as leaders in MarTech.

But here's the thing about building great products: it takes great people. Our 1,600+ Optimizers across 12 global offices are curious, collaborative, and refreshingly human. We don't do corporate speak. We do real conversations, big ideas, and genuinely care for the work we make together.

If you want to be part of a team that's shaping the future of marketing technology — and actually enjoys doing it — you're in the right place.

Find us on Instagram: @optimizely

Introduction

We're looking for a Principal Product Manager to define and build the future of Personalization at Optimizely. This is a role for someone who wants to set the vision and

deliver it. You'll own how Optimizely personalizes experiences across every channel our customers touch (Web, Mobile, and in-app today, expanding into Email and Push), how brands use audience and behavioral data to reach the right person, and how our recommendation systems make those experiences smarter over time. The ambition isn't to participate in this market.

It's to lead it, and to build the single best personalization solution available.

Personalization is a full-stack problem, and the opportunity is to connect these into one coherent, category-defining product. Much of what's needed already exists across Optimizely: a world-class content management system (CMS), the industry's leading experimentation platform, a Customer Data Platform (CDP) in ODP, Analytics, and Opal, our rapidly growing AI orchestration platform.

You'll tell that story, build the strategy that ties the pieces together, rally the teams that own them, and see it through to real adoption and measurable impact. You'll do it as our most senior individual contributor on personalization, executing through both direct ownership and cross-functional influence, and raising the bar for the PMs around you.

Critically, you'll define what personalization means in the age of AI, and change the playing field rather than react to it. As personalization shifts from marketer-configured rules toward AI that reasons, decides, and acts on its own, you'll chart the path from assisted, to agentic, to increasingly autonomous personalization, with the human setting guardrails rather than pulling every lever.

This sits at the center of our Opal-first AI strategy, and you'll own how personalization becomes one of its flagship expressions.

Job Responsibilities

• Set the vision. Define an ambitious, opinionated point of view for personalization at Optimizely and translate it into a strategy and roadmap.
• Execute to market leadership. Drive that vision to reality through both direct ownership and cross-functional influence, connecting Optimizely’s product suite into a single, market-leading personalization solution.
• Own the outcome, not just the plan. Make the hard prioritization calls, ship, measure lift for customers, and be accountable for winning the category, not just authoring the strategy.
• Define what AI-native looks like. Chart the path from assisted, to agentic, to autonomous personalization as a flagship expression of our Opal-first AI strategy, including the trust and guardrail model that earns customer confidence.
• Know the market and the customer. Talk directly with customers, understand the competitive landscape deeply, and use those insights to change what personalization can and should be in the AI era.
• Lead and mentor the team. Raise the bar for the peer PMs, upleveling them on strategy, discovery, and craft, and setting the standard the broader team operates by.
• Bring the market along. Partner with Product Marketing, Sales, Pricing and Packaging and Customer Success to position, launch, and drive adoption of a differentiated personalization story.

Knowledge and Experience

• 8+ years of Product Management experience, including senior or principal-level ownership of complex, cross-functional product areas in SaaS.
• A builder of market-leading products, not just strategies. You've taken an ambitious vision and driven it to real adoption and category leadership, owning the

outcome end to end.

• Demonstrated experience in personalization, recommendations, or audience targeting (or a closely adjacent domain such as CDP, marketing optimization, or

experimentation), with the ML fluency to be a credible partner to data science.

• A strong, forward-leaning point of view on AI and agents. You think seriously about where agentic and autonomous systems are heading and how

personalization should evolve as AI takes on more of the decisioning. Experience shipping AI-native product capabilities is a strong plus.

• Exceptional at customer discovery and cross-functional influence, able to learn directly from customers, read the competitive landscape, and drive delivery across

many teams without relying on positional authority.

• A mentor and multiplier who elevates the PMs around them, and a communicator who moves fluidly from executive strategy to detailed working sessions with

engineering and design.

Why Join Us

• Own a category-defining surface. Personalization sits at the center of Optimizely's AI-native future, and you'll set the direction for it.
• Define agentic personalization from the front. You'll shape one of the flagship expressions of our Opal-first AI strategy, at a moment when the category is being

rewritten.

• Solve a genuinely hard, full-stack problem spanning content, data, experimentation, and ML, with the scope and autonomy to do it right.
• High visibility. Your strategy will be represented to executives and to some of the world's leading brands.
• Work with a world-class team of engineers, designers, data scientists, and product thinkers who care about building for scale and impact.
• Shape the evolution of Optimizely One, our unified operating system for marketing and product innovation.
• A culture that's refreshingly human, curious, and collaborative, where your ideas directly influence the product and the business.

Education

Bachelor's Degree or equivalent experience.

Optimizely is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. Optimizely is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or other legally protected status.

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