Senior Product Owner Search

Function: Global E-business within the Global Commerce department 
Fulltime: 40 hours a week 

Closing date: 31 May 2025 

Our Global E-business team is about serving our customers better, faster and smarter by strengthening our Route to Consumer [i.e. how we engage with our distribution partners and outlets to put HEINEKEN beers in everyone’s hands], understanding our customers deeply through customer-centric approaches and driving this through cross-functional collaboration.

We achieve this by digitising all touchpoints, including distributors, sales representatives, telesales, and customer care, to serve our customers in a better, faster and smarter way.

What you'll do

We are looking for a technically-oriented Senior Product Owner to lead the vision, strategy, and execution of our eCommerce search experience as well as manage adjacent back-end services that drive this experience. You will be responsible for technical components such as API layers, identification systems, and scalable back-end architecture — in close collaboration with engineers and architects.

You will own the roadmap for both front and back-end experiences, with a strong focus on technical performance, search relevance, ranking, and personalization. While experience with UX/UI or front-end optimization is considered a plus, a strong technical background and proven experience working with complex back-end systems is essential for this role.

You will collaborate with engineers, data scientists, UX designers, and business stakeholders to deliver a world-class search and discovery experience that drives revenue and customer satisfaction.

Your roles & responsibilities:

• Define and execute the technical product roadmap for search and associated back-end services, focusing on performance, reliability, and scalability.
• Manage key back-end services in close partnership with architecture and engineering teams to enable a seamless search experience.
• Collaborate with solution architects to ensure alignment with technical design and system architecture.
• Leverage data and analytics to measure technical performance (e.g., latency, availability) and user experience metrics.
• Work with engineering teams to develop, test, and deploy advanced search algorithms and AI/ML enhancements.
• Ensure high availability and technical resilience of search-related APIs and services.
• Coordinate with front-end and design teams to improve UI/UX elements such as filtering, autocomplete, and results layout.
• Own and prioritize the technical product backlog, user stories, and requirements in an Agile environment.
• Monitor emerging technologies, industry trends, and best practices in search, data engineering, and cloud-native solutions.
• Conduct A/B testing and experimentation to improve technical KPIs and user satisfaction.
• Act as a bridge between business needs and technical feasibility, advocating for scalable and efficient solutions.

Who you are

We are looking for an ambitious professional with a strong technical mindset, who can effectively collaborate with architects and engineers, and has hands-on experience with technical products like Search Engines, API frameworks, and complex identification systems. You are comfortable owning technically complex domains and aligning cross-functional stakeholders.

You’ll bring:

• 5+ years of experience as a Product Owner or Product Manager in a technical environment (e.g., Search, APIs, Data Infrastructure, AI/ML, or similar).
• Proven experience working with architectural and engineering teams on back-end systems.
• Solid understanding of search platforms (e.g., Elasticsearch, Solr, Algolia) and how they integrate into broader system landscapes.
• Familiarity with concepts such as NLP, ranking models, and machine learning for search.
• Ability to interpret technical KPIs and make data-driven decisions.
• Experience working with REST APIs, identity/authentication solutions, and service orchestration.
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills.
• Bonus: Knowledge of front-end optimization, UI/UX design, or customer-facing search experience.

What’s in it for you – let’s uncork:

• Competitive salary between €7600 and €9500 (gross per month) and an excellent pension scheme.
• HEINEKEN is an international company with all the related perks: (inter)national career opportunities, ability to go places and diverse projects.
• We focus on developing HEINEKEN and ourselves: knowledge sharing is key and there is dedicated time for professional development through workshops, community sessions, Microsoft/Databricks courses/certifications and learning days.
• HEINEKEN embraces a hybrid working environment moving forward, with flexibility to define how often you are in the office.
• Covered commuting expenses.
• Awesome social events! :)

Ready to join our team?

Please apply via the green application button. For questions about the recruitment process please contact Leonie Reuvers (Talent Acquisition Business Partner): leonie.reuvers@heineken.com. Please note, we may close vacancies early where we receive significant numbers of applications, so don’t delay!