Do you want to help improve research communications in all corners of the globe? Come and join the world of nonprofit open infrastructure and be part of improving the creation and sharing of knowledge as our new Product Manager.
Crossref doesn’t take a traditional product management approach, but develops its products and services through three cross-functional programs to guide and accelerate our work. We introduced this new approach to work towards better cross-team alignment, shared responsibility, improved communication and learning, and make more progress on the things members need. The three programs focus on Co-creation and Community Trends, Contributing to the Research Nexus, and Open and Sustainable Operations.
The Product Manager would join the Open and Sustainable Operations (OSO) program. This program manages and oversees all activities related to making our operations more open, transparent, and sustainable. This program focuses on supporting and strengthening the core functions our members rely on and enabling future growth. It includes metadata deposit and processing, most apps for e.g. managing titles, authentication, and architectural and infrastructural projects. This program also includes modernising our operations in general, which is not just technology but also finance and human resources, so projects like membership process automation, financial analyses, and business system integrations.
We are a small team with a big impact, and we’re looking for a creative, technically-oriented Product Manager to join us to help us with the rebuild of our content system and related services. Reporting to the OSO Program Lead, the Product Manager will take a coordinating role in rebuilding the current Crossref content system and will convene relevant internal and external stakeholders to drive this project forward. Being community-led means the Product Manager is not always the expert in what they are developing, so the ability to plan, research, convene, listen, and facilitate consensus-based decisions is a key factor to being successful in this role at Crossref.
Nice-to-have:
We’re a nonprofit membership organization that exists to make scholarly communications better. We rally the community; tag and share metadata; run an open infrastructure; play with technology; and make tools and services—all to help put research in context.
We envision a rich and reusable open network of relationships connecting research organizations, people, things, and actions; a scholarly record that the global community can build on forever, for the benefit of society. We are working towards this vision of a ‘Research Nexus’ by demonstrating the value of richer and connected open metadata, incentivising people to meet best practices, while making it easier to do so. “We” means 20,000+ members from 160 countries, 160+ million records, and nearly 2 billion monthly metadata queries from thousands of tools across the research ecosystem. We want to be a sustainable source of complete, open, and global scholarly metadata and relationships.
Take a look at our strategic agenda to see the planned work that aims to achieve the vision. The sustainability area aims to make transparent all the processes and procedures we follow to run the operation long-term, including our financials and our ongoing commitment to the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI). The governance area describes our board and its role in community oversight.
It also takes a strong team – because reliable infrastructure needs committed people who contribute to and realise the vision, and thrive doing it. We are a distributed group of 49 dedicated people who like to play quizzes, talk about celery (sometimes cucumber), measure coffee intake, and create 100s of custom slack emojis. We enthusiastically support the Oxford comma but waver between use of American or British English. Occasionally we do some work to improve knowledge sharing worldwide— which we take a bit more seriously than ourselves. We do this through fair policies and working practices, a balanced approach to resourcing, and accountability to each other.
We can offer the successful candidate a challenging and fun environment to work in. Together we are dedicated to our global mission and we are constantly adapting to ensure we get there. Take a look at our organisation chart, the latest Annual Meeting recordings, and our financial information here.
We especially encourage applications from people with backgrounds historically under-represented in research and scholarly communications. You can be based anywhere in the world where we can employ staff, either directly or through an employer of record.
We will invite selected candidates to an initial call to discuss the role. Following that, shortlisted candidates will be invited to an interview. You will receive all questions in advance, and the interview will include some questions and/or exercises you’ll have a chance to prepare for. All interviews will be held remotely on Zoom.
Click here to apply!
Please strive to submit your application by July 30th, 2025.
Anticipated salary for this role is approximately 85-90k USD-equivalent, paid in local currency. Crossref offers competitive compensation, benefits, flexible work arrangements, professional development opportunities, and a supportive work environment. As a nonprofit organization, we prioritize mission over profit.
Crossref is committed to a policy of non-discrimination and equal opportunity for all employees and qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, pregnancy or a condition related to pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, ancestry, age, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, uniform service member status, or any other protected class under applicable law. Crossref will make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with known disabilities in accordance with applicable law.
