Senior Product Manager - mdpi.com (100%)

We're seeking a Senior Product Manager to own mdpi.com - our flagship publishing platform serving millions of researchers worldwide. You'll shape the strategy and evolution of one of the world's largest open-access journal portfolios, balancing content discovery, user experience, and platform scalability while navigating a complex landscape of editorial, engineering, marketing, and data teams.

As part of our commitment to fostering a collaborative team environment, this role requires working fully on-site.

Tasks & Responsibilities

Product Strategy and Roadmap:

• Define and own the product strategy and roadmap for mdpi.com, aligned with MDPI's publishing mission, business objectives, and technology strategy
• Translate editorial, marketing, and organizational priorities into a prioritized and transparent product roadmap
• Own roadmap communication and stakeholder alignment across all relevant departments
• Define success metrics and OKRs for your product, tracking impact and proposing roadmap changes based on data
• Balance short-term feature delivery with long-term platform health, scalability, and content discoverability

Stakeholder Management and Alignment:

• Build and maintain strong relationships with editorial leadership, journal managers, marketing, legal, data teams, UX, and engineering
• Navigate competing priorities across MDPI's portfolio and organizational units, building shared understanding of trade-offs
• Drive alignment on feature scope and launch plans, managing change requests and preventing scope creep
• Communicate product decisions, rationale, and outcomes clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences
• Act as the primary point of contact for mdpi.com product matters across the organization

Discovery and Validation:

• Lead product discovery processes: user research, analytics review, A/B testing, and competitive benchmarking
• Synthesize insights from researchers, authors, editors, and readers into validated product hypotheses
• Collaborate with UX designers to develop prototypes and evaluate user experience improvements
• Define and track platform KPIs including content discoverability, reader engagement, content freshness, and conversion

Delivery and Execution:

• Partner closely with the Product Owner and engineering team to drive rapid iterations, regular delivery cycles, and coordinated releases based on aligned roadmap understanding
• Monitor adoption and user satisfaction post-launch, iterating rapidly based on feedback and data
• Coordinate cross-team dependencies and ensure integrated delivery planning for major platform initiatives

Mentorship and Standards:

• Mentor junior and intermediate product managers, contributing to their growth and progression
• Define standards and best practices for product management within the platform domain
• Contribute to MDPI's product management culture through documentation, reviews, and knowledge sharing

Requirements

Education:

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field (required)
• Master's degree or MBA (desired)
• Product management certification such as CSPO, PMC, or equivalent (desired)

Experience:

• 5-10 years of product management experience
• 2-5 years of experience with content-heavy or publishing platforms
• 2-5 years of stakeholder management across editorial, marketing, and engineering teams
• 2-5 years of experience with product analytics, A/B testing, and data-driven roadmap prioritization
• 5-10 years of agile/scrum delivery in cross-functional product teams

Languages:

• English at C1 level (mandatory)
• German at B2 level (desired)

Hard Skills:

• Product discovery techniques and application of user research methods
• Stakeholder management, executive and cross-functional communication
• Product health metrics, KPI frameworks, success measurement, and A/B testing
• SEO, web performance, and accessibility for high-traffic content platforms (intermediate level)

Soft Skill:

• Effective communication; translates complex matters to non-technical audiences
• Human-centered collaborator who facilitates team collaboration
• Autonomous and self-motivated; owns domain-level outcomes
• Analytical thinking; makes data-driven decisions with consistent product quality standards
• Adaptability and continuous learning in a fast-evolving publishing and AI landscape

What We Offer

• The opportunity to contribute to the academic/scientific community;
• Flexible working hours;
• Team bond strengthening through team-building events;
• Professional growth opportunities with our global training system;
• Working in a collaborative and socially responsible team;
• Company retreat facility;
• Full-coverage insurance for accidents/daily sickness;
• Prime location near Basel train station and city center;
• And more.

If you are interested in this position, we look forward to receiving:

• A motivational letter (EN) that briefly describes your motivations for joining MDPI;
• A resume (EN) including personal information, past & current education;
• Copy of ID and Diplomas;
• If available: reference letters and certificates.

About MDPI

A pioneer in scholarly open access publishing, MDPI has supported academic communities since 1996. Our mission is to foster open scientific exchange in all forms, across all disciplines. We operate more than 500 diverse, peer-reviewed, open access journals supported by over 66,000 academic editors. We serve scholars from around the world to ensure the latest research is openly and broadly available.

MDPI is headquartered in Switzerland with additional offices in Europe, Asia and North America. We are committed to ensuring that high quality research is made available as quickly as possible. We also support sustainability projects, with sustainability as a key theme in many journals and through the MDPI Sustainability Foundation.

Initiatives

At MDPI, we develop and maintain various platforms in order to better serve the scientific community. Please find here-below a list of our main platforms:

https://www.mdpi.com

https://www.mdpi.com/books/

https://sciprofiles.com

https://sciforum.net

https://www.scilit.net

https://www.preprints.org

https://encyclopedia.pub