MDPI is scaling a portfolio of data-centric and AI-enabled products that enhance editorial quality, spanning publication ethics, expertise matching, copyediting, and typesetting, while also driving operational efficiency through the automation of routine workflows. Building on this foundation, we are expanding AI integration across the full publishing ecosystem to improve the experience of authors, reviewers, editors, and readers alike.

To support this growth, we are seeking a Product Owner who can translate strategic direction into high-impact delivery across our AI product initiatives. In this role, you will own delivery outcomes for a portfolio of AI-driven solutions that strengthen core publishing workflows while enabling new user-facing capabilities and future business models.

Working closely with AI engineering, data engineering, and platform teams, you will partner with Product Management, Product Design, and key business stakeholders to define value, shape and prioritize the backlog, validate product increments, and continuously iterate toward measurable outcomes, fully aligned with MDPI’s business and technology strategy.

As part of our commitment to fostering a collaborative team environment, this role requires working fully on-site.

Tasks & Responsibilities

Product Strategy & Value Management

• Translate MDPI business and technology strategy into clear product outcomes and value hypotheses.

• Help to identify and conceptualize new AI-based offerings and related research (including qualitative methods, such as user interviews)

• Champion data-driven decisions and insights generation; stakeholder management and communication

• Support North Star definition and ensure the product roadmap reflects incremental or new value generation, while reducing risks.

• Maintain product goals, KPIs, and benefit / value tracking for data-centric and AI products.

Discovery & Research

• Support market, competitor, and user research to inform opportunity sizing and prioritization.

• Define personas, user journeys, and data-driven problem statements; validate with experiments and prototypes.

• Ensure AI use cases follow “AI assists, humans decide” principle and are ethical, transparent, auditable, and fair.

Backlog & Delivery Orchestration

• Own and continuously refine the product backlog (epics, features, stories) with user stories and clear acceptance criteria.

• Prioritize for impact, feasibility, and dependency alignment across AI/data/platform teams

• Plan and run Agile ceremonies; coordinate cross-team delivery and manage release readiness.

Product Quality, Risk & Compliance

• Define success metrics; ensure metrics are effectively tracked and followed-up; evaluation datasets; and human-in-the-loop quality gates.

• Address data governance, privacy, security, and model risk considerations with engineering and compliance.

• Drive post-release validation, incident follow-up, and continuous improvement.

Go-to-Market & Adoption

• Partner with business/operations on enablement, documentation, training, and rollout plans.

• Partner with product growth managers and product marketing on business model finding, pricing and pricing experiments, measure adoption, engagement, and ROI.

Requirements

Education

• Master’s degree in Product Management, Computer Science, Business Management, Information Systems, or a related field

• Scrum Product Owner or Agile Practitioner certification (e.g. PSPO, PSM, SAFe)

• Product Management certification

• 2–5 years of experience as a Product Owner

• Hands-on experience shipping ML/AI-enabled capabilities (e.g. classifiers, NLP, recommendation systems, RAG); early-stage experience (<2 years) is sufficient

• Experience working with cross-functional teams; people management experience is a plus

Languages

• English – fluent (C2 required)

• German or French – conversational to advanced level (B2 or higher), optional

• Mandarin Chinese – conversational to advanced level (B2 or higher), optional

Hard Skills

• Advanced proficiency with Microsoft O365

• Strong data literacy, including experimentation, A/B testing, metrics, telemetry, and dashboards

• Advanced backlog management at scale, including epic and story decomposition, acceptance criteria, and prioritization frameworks

• Familiarity with MLOps and data platforms, including model lifecycle management, evaluation, monitoring, and governance

• Advanced proficiency with Agile tools and workflows (e.g. Jira, roadmapping, release planning)

Soft Skills & Behavioral Competencies

• Outcome-oriented, pragmatic, and value-driven mindset

• Excellent stakeholder management and facilitation across technical and business teams

• Clear, structured, and confident communicator

• High ownership, delivery discipline, and reliable follow-through

• Empathy toward users and colleagues

• Data-informed and experiment-minded; comfortable working with ambiguity and iteration

• Strong ethical judgment in AI usage, with a commitment to transparency and human oversight

• Adaptable, curious, and forward-looking approach

What we offer

• The opportunity to contribute to the academic/scientific community;

• Flexible working hours;

• Team bond strengthening through team-building events;

• Professional growth opportunities with our global training system;

• Working in a collaborative and socially responsible team;

• Company retreat facility;

• Full-coverage insurance for accidents/daily sickness;

• Prime location near Basel train station and city center;

• And more

If you are interested in this position, we look forward to receiving:

• A motivational letter (EN) that briefly describes your motivations for joining MDPI

• A resume (EN) including personal information, past & current education,

• Copy of ID and Diplomas

• If available: reference letters and certificates.

About MDPI

A pioneer in scholarly open access publishing, MDPI has supported academic communities since 1996. Our mission is to foster open scientific exchange in all forms, across all disciplines. We operate more than 400 diverse, peer-reviewed, open access journals supported by over 66,000 academic editors. We serve scholars from around the world to ensure the latest research is openly and broadly available.

MDPI is headquartered in Switzerland with additional offices in Europe, Asia and North America. We are committed to ensuring that high quality research is made available as quickly as possible. We also support sustainability projects, with sustainability as a key theme in many journals and through the MDPI Sustainability Foundation.

Initiatives

At MDPI, we develop and maintain various platforms in order to better serve the scientific community. Please find here-below a list of our main platforms:

https://www.mdpi.com
https://www.mdpi.com/books/
https://sciprofiles.com
https://sciforum.net
https://www.scilit.net
https://www.preprints.org
https://encyclopedia.pub

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