Senior Manager, Unified Search Platform

Job Number 24133618
Job Category Information Technology
Location Marriott International HQ, 7750 Wisconsin Avenue, Bethesda, Maryland, United States VIEW ON MAP
Schedule Full-Time
Located Remotely? N
Relocation? N
Position Type Management

Marriott’s Unified Search Platform (USP) team is focused on delivering the future of search for the world’s largest hotelier and is working towards our goal of becoming the world’s favorite travel company. Reporting to the Director, USP, this role will spearhead and drive forward the activation of Marriott’s enterprise-wide search platform for a variety of use cases.

The team’s work involves building and advancing the search engine (Lucidworks Fusion) that underpins a variety of search experiences on Marriott.com, including hotel, restaurant, and offers search, as well as powering front-end components across the website via recommendation services. In this role, the Sr. Manager, USP will gain exposure to the challenges of working at immense scale and the complexities of leveraging and integrating LLMs and generative AI in an enterprise environment.  

This role will help to oversee our cross-functional agile team’s development efforts, collaborating with the USP development team to ensure alignment with business requirements. The Sr. Manager, USP will provide guidance on best practices for solution design and contribute to decision-making processes. This role will also collaborate with the testing team to develop and execute comprehensive test plans. Ensure that functional solutions undergo rigorous testing to meet quality standards. 

This Sr. Manager, USP will partner with product teams, engineering, commerce and digital leaders across Marriott International to capture business requirements, define objectives, and drive a capability and feature development roadmap for USP. This will help our team activate against each aspect of that roadmap and enable our “platform as a product” approach to development and produce a world class backlog of features and enhancements. 

 

CANDIDATE PROFILE 

Education and Experience

• BA/BS in Business Administration, Computer Science, or a relevant/related major or equivalent experience
• 5 years of experience in digital product roles, with a focus on project management (onshore and offshore)
• 3 years of experience in creating functional design documents and leading design sessions 
• Experience working in an agile/scrum software development environment
• Experience interpreting business objectives and translating them into KPIs, roadmaps and product features / enhancements
• Vendor/service provider management experience 

 

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience implementing or managing site search in ecommerce or hospitality verticals
• Engineering background and/or flexibility to learn data call flows, data layers, service caching, APIs, and other aspects of solution architecture
• Effective written and oral communication skills, especially between technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Strong interpersonal skills and the capability to build relationships at all levels of an organization
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Desire to work on a high-performing team and in a results-oriented culture
• Thrives in a fast-paced, entrepreneurial environment

 

CORE WORK ACTIVITIES 

• Help define and execute against business objectives and functional strategies, ensuring alignment with overall project goals.
• Translate business requirements into functional specifications, ensuring clarity and feasibility.
• Identify new platform opportunities to drive better customer experiences and increase incremental revenue from the search platform.
• Guide the functional team, foster a collaborative and innovative work environment for both onshore and offshore teams. 
• Provide guidance on best practices for solution design and contribute to decision-making processes. Assist in the deployment planning process, providing onshore support to ensure smooth transitions and user adoption.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to address any post-deployment issues and optimize functional performance. 

 

Managing Work, Projects, and Policies 

• This individual will embody the ‘servant leader’ mindset and create/foster relationships that achieve business outcomes.
• Provides accurate estimates as to needed time to complete work to feed project plans (and therefore personal deadlines).
• Meets deadlines once agreed upon, provides regular status updates to manager, leadership and key stakeholders. 
• Successfully manages multiple assignments at once; works based on priorities and requests clarification if priorities are not clear.
• Communicates in a timely and appropriate manner with teammates.
• Provides feedback to others in a helpful and professional manner.

 

Additional Responsibilities 

• Sets and maintains personal development goals; working across shared MBOs, KPIs and OKRs.
• Works independently with minimal supervision, but knows when issues should be escalated to manager.
• Develops relationships with members of other teams, and leverages those relationships to answer questions.
• Presents work with clarity and confidence; explains complex matters so that others can understand them.
• Uses appropriate communication mechanisms (e.g. in-person, Teams, chat, email, call) for each situation.
• Demonstrates self-confidence, passion for the business, energy, optimism and enthusiasm.
• Performs other reasonable duties as assigned by manager.

 

MANAGEMENT COMPETENCIES 

Leadership

• Adaptability – Maintains performance level under pressure or when experiencing changes or challenges in the workplace. 
• Communication – Conveys information and ideas to others in a convincing and engaging manner through a variety of methods.
• Problem Solving and Decision Making - Identifies and understands issues, problems, and opportunities; obtains and compares information from different sources to draw conclusions, develops and evaluates alternatives and solutions, solves problems, and chooses a course of action.
• Professional Demeanor - Exhibits behavioral styles that convey confidence and command respect from others; makes a good first impression and represents the company in alignment with its values. 
• Strategy Development - Develops business plans by exploring and systematically evaluating opportunities with the greatest potential for producing positive results; ensures successful preparation and execution of business plans through effective planning, organizing, and on-going evaluation processes.

 

Managing Execution

• Building and Contributing to Teams - Participates as a member of a team to move toward the completion of common goals while fostering cohesion and collaboration among team members.
• Strategy Execution – Ensures successful execution across of business plans designed to maximize customer satisfaction, profitability, and market share through effective planning, organizing, and on-going evaluation processes.
• Driving for Results - Sets high standards of performance for self and/or others; assumes responsibility for work objectives; initiates, focuses, and monitors the efforts of self and/or others toward the accomplishment goals; proactively takes action and goes beyond what is required.
• Planning and Organizing - Gathers information and resources required to set a plan of action for self and/or others; prioritizes and arranges work requirements to accomplish goals and ensure work is completed.

 

Building Relationships

• Customer Relationships - Develops and sustains relationships based on an understanding of customer/stakeholder needs and actions consistent with the company’s service standards.
• Coworker Relationships - Interacts with others in a way that builds openness, trust, and confidence in the pursuit of organizational goals and lasting relationships. 
• Global Mindset - Supports employees and business partners with diverse styles, abilities, motivations, and/or cultural perspectives; utilizes differences to drive innovation, engagement and enhance business results; and ensures employees are given the opportunity to contribute to their full potential.

 

Generating Talent and Organizational Capability 

• Organizational Capability - Evaluates and adapts the structure of assignments and work processes to best fit the needs and/or support the goals of an organizational unit.
• Talent Management - Provides support and feedback to help individuals develop and strengthen skills and abilities needed to accomplish work objectives.

 

Learning and Applying Professional Expertise

• Applied Learning - Seeks and makes the most of learning opportunities to improve performance of self and/or others.
• Business Acumen - Understands and utilizes business information to manage everyday operations and generate innovative solutions to approach business and administrative challenges.
• Technical Acumen - Understands and utilizes professional skills and knowledge in a specific functional area to conduct and manage everyday business operations and generate innovative solutions to approach function-specific work challenges.
• Basic Competencies - Fundamental competencies required for accomplishing basic work activities. 
  • Basic Computer Skills - Uses basic computer hardware and software (e.g., personal computers, word processing software, Internet browsers, etc.).
  • Mathematical Reasoning - Adds, subtracts, multiplies, or divides quickly, correctly, and in a way that allows one to solve work-related issues.
  • Oral Comprehension - Listens to and understands information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
  • Reading Comprehension – Understands written sentences and paragraphs in work related documents.
  • Writing - Communicates effectively in writing as appropriate for the needs of the audience.

 

Marriott International is an equal opportunity employer. We believe in hiring a diverse workforce and sustaining an inclusive, people-first culture. We are committed to non-discrimination on any protected basis, such as disability and veteran status, or any other basis covered under applicable law.

Marriott International is the world’s largest hotel company, with more brands, more hotels and more opportunities for associates to grow and succeed. Be where you can do your best work,​ begin your purpose, belong to an amazing global​ team, and become the best version of you.