Annual salary: £65,000 to £70,000 per annum (DOE)
Own the Future of Travel Discovery with AI-Powered Search
At Forge Holiday Group, we’re home to leading brands including Sykes Holiday Cottages, Forest Holidays and Bachcare (New Zealand). With over 1,700 colleagues, we’re building a modern, AI-enabled business where technology, data and innovation create unforgettable experiences for our guests and drive better outcomes for our owners.
We’re looking for a Product Manager – Search Relevance & Ranking to own the strategy, roadmap and evolution of the search experiences that help millions of customers discover their perfect holiday.
This is a high-impact product role at the heart of our AI transformation - shaping how customers search, discover and connect with the right properties through smarter algorithms, semantic search and conversational experiences.
Here’s The Deal:
- Salary: £65,000 to £70,000 DOE
- Hybrid Working: 2+ days/week at Chester HQ
- Team: Product - working across Platform, AI, Engineering, Data Science, Design and Commercial teams
- Culture: Innovative, collaborative, customer-focused and driven by continuous improvement
About The Product Manager (Search Relevance & Ranking) Role:
Search. AI. Discovery. The Future of Holiday Booking.
This isn’t a traditional search product role.
You’ll own the vision and roadmap for how guests discover holiday properties - defining what search surfaces, how results are ranked, and how AI-powered experiences can make discovery more intuitive, personalised and meaningful.
Working closely with Product, Search Engineering, Data Science and Commercial teams, you’ll balance exceptional guest experiences with commercial outcomes for our owners, ensuring the right properties are visible to the right customers at the right time.
You’ll help evolve our search capabilities from traditional keyword-based experiences towards semantic, conversational and agentic discovery patterns — creating the foundations for the future of travel search.
What You’ll Be Doing
- Own the product vision, strategy and roadmap for search relevance, ranking and discovery experiences.
- Define how search surfaces and ranking systems evolve to improve guest experience and commercial performance.
- Partner with Engineering and Data Science teams to develop algorithmic search, semantic search and AI-powered discovery experiences.
- Balance relevance, personalisation, commercial weighting and owner outcomes through thoughtful product decisions.
- Define and measure search success through KPIs including relevance, coverage, latency, conversion and customer satisfaction.
- Lead experimentation across search features, ranking changes and discovery journeys through robust A/B testing.
- Shape the future of conversational and AI-driven search experiences, including emerging LLM and agentic patterns.
- Collaborate across Product, Design, Technology, Data and Commercial teams to align priorities and deliver measurable outcomes.
- Communicate complex technical concepts clearly, creating alignment and momentum across stakeholders.
What We’re Looking For
You’ll Bring:
- Extensive experience in Product Management, with a strong track record across discovery, delivery, prioritisation and outcome measurement.
- Proven experience owning and delivering search strategy within technically complex systems.
- Strong understanding of search fundamentals including ranking algorithms, vector embeddings and learning-to-rank approaches.
- Experience working closely with Engineers, Data Scientists and technical teams.
- A commercial mindset with experience defining KPIs, analysing customer behaviour and using experimentation to drive decisions.
- Excellent communication and influencing skills, with the ability to translate strategy into action.
Bonus Points If You Have Experience With:
- Travel, hospitality, ecommerce or marketplace products.
- AI-powered search, LLM applications, retrieval-augmented generation or conversational AI.
- Scaling search products across multiple markets or domains.
- Agentic systems, AI workflows or task automation.
- Applying emerging technologies to solve complex customer and business challenges.
Forge Holiday Group Benefits:
- Annual bonus scheme based on company performance
- ✈️ 33 days’ holiday (including bank holidays), plus up to 5 extra with long service.
- Option to purchase extra holiday days if you wish.
- A day off for your birthday
- ✋ 2 volunteering days per year.
- Enhanced parental leave (24 weeks maternity, 3 weeks paternity at full pay).
- Pension scheme with employer contributions
- Discounted and last-minute stays at Forest Holidays and Sykes Cottages for you, your friends & family.
- ️ Special offers and discounts designed to enhance your overall wellbeing.
- ❤️Health cash plan & life assurance.
- Training & development opportunities.
- 24/7 mental health support.
- On-site gym and parking at Chester HQ (near train station).
- Employee savings scheme
- Long service awards and company events
We’re committed to diversity and inclusion and encourage you to bring your authentic self. Need adjustments for recruitment? Just ask.
Ready to shape the future of holiday discovery? Join us and build the AI-powered search experiences that will help millions of guests find their perfect escape.
