Senior Product Manager, Machine Learning & Optimization
Index Exchange
Software Engineering, Product, Data Science
Toronto, ON, Canada
USD 140k-280k / year + Equity
Posted on Dec 22, 2025
Senior Product Manager, Machine Learning & Optimization
New York • Toronto (8 Spadina Ave)
Product
Hybrid
Full-time
Index Exchange is a global advertising supply-side platform enabling media owners to maximize the value of their content on any screen. As a trusted partner and ally, we connect leading experience makers with the world’s largest brands to ensure a quality experience for consumers.
We’re a proud industry pioneer with over 20 years of experience accelerating the ad technology evolution. With our radically transparent business practices and dedication to total market efficiency, we’re committed to upholding the integrity of the programmatic ecosystem at large.
What’s it like to work at Index?
Index is an exciting and fast-paced place to work. You'll be able to feed your ambition, lean into trust and transparency, and feel genuine support from your colleagues. We’re built on our core values and live them each day. They're not just buzzwords.
We pride ourselves on our independence and openness, not only in our technology, but in our teams, too. Our diverse and inclusive culture celebrates how we can leverage our unique differences to help drive Index forward.
We have more than 550 Indexers around the globe dedicated to building a safe and transparent marketplace that provides a trusted experience for consumers, and we’re looking for talented professionals to help take us to the next level.
Are you ready to join the programmatic evolution?
Index Exchange is looking for a Senior Product Manager who combines vision with practicality to steer our Machine Learning and Optimization (MLO) initiatives. Every day, our exchange manages billions of ad transactions. This creates an abundance of data and complexity that challenges even the most robust reporting systems and data-driven analysis. As the Product Manager, you'll grapple with crucial problems such as identifying the impressions most likely to be purchased by different buyers, devising solutions for price prediction, and overcoming auction flooring challenges.
Candidates should bring substantial hands-on experience from technical environments, specifically in working with Data Science and Engineering teams to bring Machine Learning (ML) based features to market. A robust foundation in Statistics or Mathematics will support your work in the intricate field of Machine Learning. You'll be trusted to cultivate and expand our team's skill set from day one.
You will find yourself in high-visibility, high-stakes settings, where your capacity to guide projects from concept to completion with minimal supervision and exceptional project management skills will be central to your success. While prior experience in ad tech – with a solid understanding of programmatic advertising, DSPs, buyers, publishers, etc. – will equip you to hit the ground running, we also welcome candidates with experience in financial markets or pricing, such as airline yield management. Your inclination towards working with big data platforms and launching analytics and reporting products to market will add to your appeal.
Our ideal candidate is someone who flourishes in data-rich environments, communicates superbly, and navigates efficiently across various time zones. If you're a numbers whizz who loves delving into complex technical challenges, and you're keen to create innovative products for our 3,000 publisher clients, this role could be your perfect fit.
What we’re looking for:
Platform Thinking
- You think in platforms, not one-offs. You identify patterns across problems and design scalable, generic solutions that solve them broadly.
- You understand how to balance flexibility and standardization, and you build for long-term leverage while solving immediate customer needs.
Technical Curiosity & Depth
- You bring a strong technical acumen — not to design systems yourself, but to deeply understand how they work.
- You’re naturally curious about AI/ML, distributed systems, and ad exchanges, and you dive into details to ensure solutions are not just shipped, but shipped right.
- You partner seamlessly with Data Science and Engineering, asking the right questions, spotting gaps, and holding the bar high for quality and accountability.
Strong Communication & Leadership Presence
- You are a natural communicator — clear, confident, and adaptable whether it’s 1:1 with engineers, presenting to executives, or engaging with clients.
- You assert yourself as a leader in the room: not a spectator, but an active voice who drives clarity and alignment.
- You inspire confidence across teams and are comfortable representing Index externally.
Opinionated Problem-Solver
- You don’t just surface problems — you come to the table with solutions.
- You understand systems and constraints deeply enough to form strong, well-reasoned opinions about how to move forward.
- You bring those opinions confidently into upward and cross-functional discussions, shaping the direction of the product rather than acting as a passive communication channel.
Ownership & Proactiveness
- You treat your product area as a business within the business. You organize complex problem spaces, define priorities, and own outcomes.
- You proactively manage up and across, providing crisp updates and flagging risks before they become problems.
- You anticipate the next 5 steps, think through edge cases, and rally cross-functional teams to stay ahead of blockers.
Analytical Sharpness & Judgment
- You don’t need to be a Data Scientist, but you’re highly data-literate: comfortable with SQL, interpreting experiments, and spotting when numbers look “off.”
- You have strong product intuition, backed by the ability to pressure-test assumptions with data.
- You develop a spidey sense for when something isn’t right, dig deeper, and help steer teams away from dead ends early.
Organized, Written-First Operator
- You are highly organized and use structured writing to bring clarity of thought and drive alignment across teams and stakeholders.
- You synthesize problems into clear roadmaps, requirements, and acceptance criteria.
- You think through not only what to build, but also how to release, measure, and monitor ML products, features, and capabilities at exchange scale.
Here’s what you’ll be doing:
- Partner with Data Science, Engineering, and Infrastructure teams to design and deliver ML-driven optimization products.
- Translate complex system behavior into clear product requirements, project roadmaps, and acceptance criteria.
- Apply platform thinking to identify common patterns and constraints, designing scalable solutions that benefit multiple use cases.
- Analyze experiments, model outputs, and business impact to validate hypotheses and guide iteration.
- Collaborate with commercial teams and customers to identify problems worth solving and align incentives across the ecosystem.
- Launch and own features end-to-end: from strategy and requirements to go-to-market and ongoing performance monitoring.
- Define success metrics, monitor live performance, and ensure ML features scale reliably across billions of transactions.
- Be the connective tissue between internal stakeholders and external customers, ensuring that what we build delivers real value.
Here's what you need:
- 5+ years of Product Management experience in ad tech platforms, auctions, yield management, pricing, forecasting, advanced modeling, machine learning, or AI.
- We prefer candidates with a degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Math, Statistics, Physics, or Economics. However, we understand that some of the most accomplished product leaders may hold different degrees. Ultimately, we place greater emphasis on experience and relevant skills.
- A track record of successful 0-1 product launches and landings
- Experience and familiarity with building and shipping at internet scale within the Agile framework
- Strong technical, communication, and analytical skills
- Comfortable working across time zones on a global team
- Flexibility for travel
Why you’ll love working here:
- Comprehensive health, dental, and vision plans for you and your dependents
- Paid time off, health days, and personal obligation days plus flexible work schedules
- Competitive retirement matching plans
- Equity packages
- Generous parental leave available to birthing, non-birthing, and adoptive parents
- Annual well-being allowance plus fitness discounts and group wellness activities
- Commuter benefits and discounts, where available
- Employee assistance program
- Mental health first aid program that provides an in-the-moment point of contact and reassurance
- One day of volunteer time off per year and a donation-matching program
- Bi-weekly town halls and regular community-led team events
- Multiple resources and programming to support continuous learning
- A workplace that supports a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment – learn more here
Equal employment opportunity
At Index Exchange, we believe that successful products are built by teams just as diverse as the audience who uses them. As such, we are committed to equal employment opportunities. We celebrate diversity of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or expression, or veteran status. Additionally, we realize that diversity is deeper than any status or classification—diversity is the human experience. For those who show grit, passion, and humility—Index will welcome you.
Accessibility for applicants with disabilities
Index Exchange welcomes and encourages individuals with disabilities to apply to work with us.
If you require an accommodation, please share the details of your request and any information how we can assist you with the hiring recruiter when they contact you. Index Exchange will make reasonable efforts to ensure accommodation requests are met throughout the recruitment process.
Index everywhere, Index anywhere
Our corporate headquarters are in Toronto, with major offices in New York, Montreal, Kitchener, London, San Francisco, and many other global cities. As a major global advertising exchange, we are committed to operating as a tightly knit global team and embracing and empowering talent wherever our colleagues may be.
#Ll-AS2
#LI-Hybrid
Compensation
The base pay range for this role is $140,000 – $280,000 per year.
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Req ID: 2025-IX729
