JOB PURPOSE
The Digital Product Office for Onside Search will act as the center of excellence for onsite search and product discovery across our ecommerce portfolio of brands.
This role is responsible for defining best practices, driving performance, and enabling scalable execution of onsite search and PLP merchandising strategies across all brands.
This role combines product ownership, CRO, and merchandising expertise, with a strong focus on conversion, customers experience and revenue growth.
Success in this role will be measured by the ability to scale best-in-class onsite search practices across all brands, delivering measurable improvements in conversion, customer experience, and revenue.
This role will
• Set the strategy and standards for onsite search and merchandising for all Alshaya online brands
• Define the operational framework for search and merch where execution is shared between CoE and brand merchandising teams
• Enable and coach merchandising teams and ultimately be accountable for their execution
• Drive continuous optimization through testing and data analysis
• Ensure consistency and performance at scale
KEY RESPONSIBILITES
Product & tooling
• Act as product owner for onsite search tool (Algolia or equivalent)
• Manage roadmap, feature enhancements, vendor relationship and tool configuration (rules, ranking, indices, etc.)
• Ensure full utilization of platform capabilities across brands
• Work closely with tech and product teams on stability and feature improvements
Center of Excellence
• Define and maintain group-wide onsite search and PLP merchandising best practices
• Establish clear guidelines on:
o Relevancy & ranking logic,
o Boost/bury strategies,
o Synonyms, redirect and search rules,
o Facets, filters and navigation
o No-result and low-result handling
• Continuous benchmark against industry best practices and competitors
• Translate insights into actionable playbooks for brands
Advocacy
• Act as the go-to expert for onsite search across all brands
• Animate the community of merchandisers around all things search and merch
• Provide:
o Training/guild sessions
o Playbooks and ‘how-to’ guides
o Regular performance reviews and feedback loops
• Ensure consistent adoption of best practices across ~15 brands
• Drive accountability on execution quality
Experimentation and A/B testing
• Design and execute a structure A/B testing roadmap for search and PLP
• Test areas such as:
o Ranking algorithms
o Products sorting strategies
o Personalization approaches
o Visual merchandising
• Work with merchandising community to scale winning tests across brands
Governance & execution quality
• Ensure all brands follow aligned search and merchandising standards
• Regularly audit search performance, rule implementation, category and product discoverability
• Identify gap and drive corrective actions
• Establish clear reporting and KPIs across brands
Reporting & Insights
• Define and own search performance reporting framework
• Track key KPIs (Search contribution to revenue, CVR uplift, No-result rate, Top search terms, etc.)
• Leverage reporting and customer behavior insights to drive recommendation and optimization
• Partner with brand teams to translate insights into actionable improvements
EXPERIENCE / COMPETENCIES REQUIRED
Key Skills
• Minimum of 2 years of experience in eCommerce onsite search / merchandising / CRO
• Hands-on experience with search tools (Algolia, Bloomreach or equivalent)
• Ability to define frameworks and best practices at scale
• Strong stakeholder management across multiple brands / clients
• Experience training, enabling, and influencing non-direct teams
• Proven ability to drive conversion and revenue through optimization
• Strong analytical mindset
• Good presentation skills
Preferred Skills
• Experience designing and running A/B testing
• Exposure to personalization and recommendation engines
• Basic understanding of front-end / data structures