Principal Product Manager, Habit Formation

About the role

You will lead the strategy for engagement journeys that help listeners build lasting habits with music, podcasts, and audiobooks. This role focuses on creating intelligent systems that turn behavioral signals into meaningful discovery experiences across the Spotify platform. You will own the end-to-end product lifecycle for habit-forming features, ensuring that user needs and business objectives are met through thoughtful design and execution. You will work at the intersection of behavioral science and machine learning to define how users interact with content over the long term. The position requires a deep commitment to understanding user context and leveraging data to inform product decisions. You will be responsible for translating complex insights into clear product requirements and narratives that resonate with stakeholders. This role demands comfort with ambiguity and the ability to drive outcomes in a fast-paced, iterative environment. You will act as the product voice for engagement, ensuring that every decision supports sustainable listener growth.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Set the vision, roadmap, and execution strategy for consumer engagement journeys.
• Design engagement systems that suggest new formats and features based on user behavior.
• Collaborate with Machine Learning and Data Science to build models that predict user readiness and growth.
• Integrate AI and agent technologies into user-facing product features.
• Lead cross-functional groups including Engineering, Design, and Research to prototype and ship product improvements.
• Ensure engagement journeys remain consistent across various Spotify surfaces.
• Create frameworks for measuring long-term listener value rather than short-term metrics.
• Navigate ambiguity to make product decisions based on behavioral insights and user research.
• Align senior leadership on initiatives that cross multiple organizational boundaries.
• Maintain a balance between rapid innovation and platform integrity, privacy, and quality.
• Define and prioritize metrics that reflect habit strength, retention, and user wellbeing over time.
• Partner with content teams to optimize how music, podcasts, and audiobooks are surfaced in habit-forming flows.
• Conduct ongoing analysis of user behavior to identify opportunities for intervention and improvement.
• Translate qualitative user insights into quantitative hypotheses that guide product experimentation.
• Establish best practices for engagement product development across the Personalization organization.

Requirements

• 10+ years of product management experience working on global consumer products.
• Proven track record of delivering features that drive sustained long-term engagement.
• Deep technical understanding of experimentation, product metrics, and behavioral analytics.
• Experience building products powered by machine learning, recommender systems, or personalization.
• Ability to manage complex stakeholder relationships and influence products across multiple platforms.
• Experience with or strong interest in developing LLM-enabled or AI-driven consumer experiences.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to bridge gaps between technical and design teams.
• Demonstrated ability to operate effectively in fast-paced, ambiguous environments while maintaining rigor.
• Experience working with large datasets and translating analytical findings into product decisions.
• Strong judgment in prioritizing tradeoffs between user value, business impact, and technical feasibility.
• Commitment to privacy, security, and ethical considerations in product development.
• Willingness to engage in hands-on prototyping and iterative testing throughout the product cycle.
• Ability to lead without direct authority by inspiring trust and clarity in product vision.
• Comfort working alongside data scientists, engineers, researchers, and designers on a daily basis.

Nice to have

• Background or interest in behavioral science and user motivation research.
• Experience developing measurement frameworks for product success.

Skills & tools

• Product Strategy
• Machine Learning and Recommender Systems
• Behavioral Analytics
• Experimentation and A/B Testing
• AI and LLM Product Development
• Cross-functional Leadership

Practical notes

• Salary range: $182,308 - $260,441 plus equity.
• Benefits include health insurance, 23 paid days off, 13 flexible holidays, paid sick leave, 401(k) retirement plan, and a monthly meal allowance.
• Six months of paid parental leave is provided.
• Spotify is an equal opportunity employer and offers reasonable accommodations for the application and interview process upon request.
• The role is based in New York, NY, with flexibility for North America region candidates provided they align with Eastern Standard Time.
• This is a permanent full-time position with opportunities for growth and impact at scale.
• Candidates should be prepared for a rigorous interview process that may include product sense exercises, behavioral interviews, and technical discussions.
• Application review will begin promptly and continue until the role is filled.
• Relocation support may be considered for candidates who successfully move to the role location.
• Professional development opportunities are available to support continuous learning and career growth.
• The successful candidate will be expected to collaborate closely with global teams and contribute to Spotify's mission of unlocking the potential of human creativity.