Job Summary

We’re expanding our Design and Product Management Team to include a versatile Product Manager who excels at product growth but is also strong in core/feature work and excited to collaborate on product-market fit expansion concepts. Sports Reference currently serves 20 million (and growing) monthly users through our free, ad-supported Reference sites (Baseball Reference, Basketball Reference, etc.) and Stathead (our SaaS offering that empowers users to dive deeper into our massive Reference databases with powerful search and filtering tools). We also recently acquired Immaculate Grid, the viral baseball trivia game, and have since launched ad-supported grid games for basketball, football, hockey, and soccer.

Our sites display performance metrics for thousands of athletes but your focus will be on the performance metrics of our products, such as conversion funnels, event data, and churn rate. You’ll be focused on how our users are finding, using, and succeeding with our products. With that increased understanding, we will devise new strategies to find even more people who will love our products.

Background

Sports Reference’s capacity to make well-informed product decisions is growing. The current, five-person Product Group includes a wide range of disciplines, such as web development, research methods, design, user experience research, and SEO. We’re seeking a Product Manager who can work with all of these disciplines (as well as our Marketing, Data, and Engineering Teams) to help define and execute our product strategy and roadmap.

You will report to the Director of Design and Product Management. We have many of the ingredients of a high-performing product team in place. Our core purpose and North Star metrics (including their inputs) are well-known across the company. We have a mountain of product ideas recorded as Bet Sheets. Our products are performing well, but we know there is an opportunity to amplify that success.

Your success in this position will be a combination of driving growth (with a focus on Stathead’s growth), enhancing existing products and features to facilitate that growth, using data effectively, ensuring user satisfaction, and collaborating on new ways to expand product-market fit. It’s a multifaceted role that demands a blend of strategic thinking, data analysis, collaboration, and user-centric focus.

To Apply

Please visit our jobs website at https://sports-reference-llc.breezy.hr/ and submit your resume and a cover letter for this position. In your cover letter, describe your experience and why you think you would be a great fit for this role. We believe that knowledge of the sports industry (as a fan or follower, not necessarily on a professional level) would put a candidate at a significant advantage, but we would consider an exceptional candidate who does not follow sports closely.

We will begin the phone interview process the week of February 5, 2024. Applications arriving after this date, will be collected, but will receive consideration at the discretion of the hiring manager based on the progress we have made in filling the position. We have provided a general outline of our interview process here: https://www.sports-reference.com/job-interview-process.html

Our Purpose and Values

We democratize data, so our users enjoy, understand, and share the sports they love.

We value:

Respect for our users, the athletes we cover, and our team;
Craftsmanship in building tools and products;
Reliable tools and services that meet our users’ needs every day; and
Data democratization. We publish many data sets for emerging and underserved sports. For instance, the New York Times covered our recognition of the Negro Leagues as major leagues in the summer of 2021.

To meet these expectations, we encourage team members to participate in company discussions and share new ideas, features or potential solutions to problems.

Goals and Tasks for Your First Year (In rough order of importance)

Must-Reach Goals and Tasks

Develop a deep understanding of our products and the users who rely on them.
Manage and optimize the Stathead conversion funnel. Ensure campaigns are properly tracked so we can better understand the upgrade path from our free Reference sites to Stathead. By working closely with Marketing and Engineering, you’ll optimize these campaigns and develop new ones.
Also lead additional core/feature product work, including creating project detail sheets, documenting feature specifications, and testing throughout the development process.
Work with the Director of Design and Product Management to define and execute the product strategy and roadmap through feature and growth work as well as product-market fit expansion. We will be guided by our purpose and north star metrics while favoring outcomes over outputs.
Prepare for, lead, and synthesize user interviews related to the efforts you are leading. Additionally, regularly attend interviews related to product discovery that are led by other researchers and PMs.
Be an active member of our Product Group. Regularly participate in Bet Sheet meetings (where we review new product ideas), prioritization exercises, and any other team rituals.
Develop strong working relationships with all other teams at Sports Reference (Engineering, Marketing, and Data).

Nice-to-Reach Goals and Tasks

Be comfortable making small changes in our codebase (such as adding UTM campaigns, tracking events, and text edits).
Identify ways to apply more experimentation in our work so we can quickly learn and adjust.
We describe the guiding philosophy of the visual design and usability of our sites as “aggressively functional.” We are in the initial planning stages of our first design refresh in over six years. You will most likely play a supporting role in this effort, but it will impact the products you are working on. Our end goal will be a modernized look and feel across the Reference sites and Stathead, but one that remains classic and focuses heavily on data presentation, page speed, accessibility, and readability.

Qualifications and Skills

Familiarity with product analytics (Google Analytics or similar), such as event and conversion tracking. We are expecting some experience here but not necessarily extensive experience. There is room to grow here, rather than bringing in someone already at an expert level.
Experience working on a software-as-a-service, e-commerce, or subscription product would be considered a plus.
For example, a UX Designer/Researcher, project manager, or scrum master looking to move into product management could be a good fit if that person worked for a company selling a product or service to end users and understands how product analytics can positively influence their work.
Continue your ongoing professional development, which we will support.

Salary

Salary range starting at $93k for U.S. based employees. We are a remote-first company and determine our pay range for this position based on the market rates for Philadelphia, our home base. The salary offered will be based on your experience and skill level.

For candidates outside of the United States, we will calculate a local market rate based on pay for comparable positions in that market and comparable benefits packages when possible.

Annual bonuses are variable and are tied to a percentage of the company’s end of year profits and the employee’s time worked and salary earned during the year. In the last three years, they have averaged 15% of annual salary.

Benefits

Even though we are a small company, Sports Reference has a generous benefits package.

The total value of our benefits package is up to $30,000.
We cover full health and dental insurance costs for full-time employees and their dependent children. We cover 70%-80% of plans for an entire family.
We have a 401k with a match on your contributions up to 4% of your base salary. The 401k has many low cost investing options.
We pay all premiums for company-sponsored life and long-term disability insurance for all employees.
We provide up to $7,000/year in continuing education benefits.
Even if you live in or near Philly, you have the option to work remotely as much as you choose. We generally work a standard workday, but with flexibility to flex hours within that framework.
Any parent welcoming a new child to their family is entitled to 13 weeks of fully paid leave and up to an additional 26 weeks at half-time.
Employees begin with 18 days of PTO per year and an additional 8 paid company holidays and accrue sick leave at the rate of one day per month.
We will generally buy you whatever equipment will make you the most productive.
We typically will pay for reasonable moving-related expenses related to your acceptance of a position with Sports Reference. Please ask if you have any questions related to this benefit.
We provide a $50/month remote work stipend to cover the cost of internet access and incidental expenses.
For employees outside of the United States, we will work to provide equivalent benefits or additional compensation.

Other Information

Sports Reference’s first site was launched in 2000. We have bootstrapped ourselves to 32 full-time employees and have no venture capital backing.
We are willing to provide accommodations for candidates for whom the timing or structure of our interview process may be challenging. This may include early morning or evening interview times or provide payment to cover child care expenses if needed. If you are applying for a role where verbal communication is not a significant requirement, we may consider an alternative form of interview as is reasonably possible and suitable. Similarly if an extended period of internet connectivity is a challenge, we may consider an alternate form of interview. If we invite you to interview, please let us know of any possibly necessary accommodations.
Our typical interview process is described at https://www.sports-reference.com/job-interview-process.html
Sports Reference is a remote-first company. Sports Reference is located in Philadelphia and non-Philadelphia candidates will be considered on an equal footing to those who are local. Presently, all Sports Reference employees are working remotely at least some of the time. We have re-opened our office, but well over half of our team is full-time remote and those in Philly are in the office on days of their choosing.
This is a full-time position.
Employment at Sports Reference LLC is at-will and this position is an at-will appointment.
Applicants are generally preferred to have a legal right to work in the United States. Please let us know in your application if you do not have the right to work in the United States. We have hired two employees located outside of the United States, so we will consider foreign applicants.
We are a corporate sponsor of Women in Sports and Tech.
100% of our merchandise sales support youth sports.

Sports Reference is a growing company, and your work will be highly visible and have a definite and immediate impact (Read about us in the New York Times and The Athletic). We reach over 20 million users each month and served over 2 billion pages in 2023.