Head of Product, Innovation and AI – Citi Travel, Senior Vice President

Citi • Irving, TX

2d • $156,160 - $234,240 • Hybrid

About The Position

The Head of Product, Innovation and AI – Citi Travel is a senior product leadership role accountable for leading Citi Travel’s product organization and executing its end-to-end product strategy. Reporting to the Director – Head of Travel Partnerships, Customer Experience & AI, the role translates strategic travel priorities into digital experiences and leads a cross-functional product team to drive customer engagement, conversion, and business outcomes across travel loyalty platforms.

The role oversees the travel product ecosystem, translating business and partnership strategies into booking and itinerary-management capabilities. It combines travel industry expertise—including pricing, inventory, ticketing, GDS/OTA connectivity, and ancillary merchandising—with AI-enabled capabilities such as smart search, recommendations, and proactive disruption management. The position focuses on gross bookings value, conversion, cardmember retention, and traveler satisfaction.

The role leads product managers and establishes product management standards, operating models, and discovery-to-delivery practices. It owns multi-year roadmaps and product lifecycles, optimizes booking and merchandising experiences, operationalizes partner integrations, and manages the digital customer journey from inspiration and search through checkout and post-booking support. It also leads AI and experimentation initiatives, supports marketing and loyalty goals, and ensures product compliance with Citi’s risk, control, privacy, accessibility, and regulatory requirements.

The position is based in Wilmington, Delaware, with a hybrid schedule of three days in the office and two days working remotely each week. The role is full-time.

Requirements

• 10–14+ years of relevant experience in digital product management, consumer platforms, travel technology (OTA/GDS), loyalty/rewards, or marketplace ecosystems.
• 10+ years of related product sales experience.
• Proven experience leading, managing, and developing product management teams within a large, matrixed financial services or high-scale consumer technology organization.
• Demonstrated success taking complex, multi-million-dollar digital products and partner integrations from strategy to scalable production delivery.
• Proficiency in modern API architectures, cloud-native platforms, AI/ML product applications, data analytics, and agile product delivery methodologies.
• Substantial experience collaborating with senior external technology or content partners and executive stakeholders across business, technology, operations, legal, and compliance.
• Ability to articulate a compelling product vision and rally multidisciplinary teams around strategic outcomes.
• Exceptional communication, storytelling, and negotiation skills to influence senior leadership and align cross-functional partners.
• Strong delivery focus, including removing blockers and managing complex dependencies in fast-paced, ambiguous environments.
• Customer-focused approach to understanding pain points and designing intuitive, frictionless digital experiences.
• Proactive commitment to managing operational, compliance, and third-party risks while maintaining agility.
• Bachelor’s or university degree.

Nice To Haves

• Master’s degree or MBA preferred.

Responsibilities

• Build, mentor, and lead a high-performing team of product managers.
• Establish product discovery and delivery frameworks for complex travel systems, including booking funnel optimization, supplier API orchestration, release planning, and KPI instrumentation.
• Set product management standards and practices, including OKRs, customer journey mapping, hypothesis-driven experimentation, and backlog governance.
• Align Technology, Digital UX/UI Design, Analytics, Marketing, Customer Experience and Servicing, and business owners around a cohesive product vision.
• Cultivate a culture of innovation, data fluency, accountability, customer focus, and collaboration.
• Define and execute multi-year product roadmaps in alignment with the Director, supporting growth, premium cardmember retention, and travel volume expansion.
• Optimize inventory display logic, cache refresh strategies, supplier markup and discount rules, and ancillary cross-sell modules.
• Prioritize business, partner, technology, and customer needs using quantitative evaluation and value-scoring frameworks.
• Manage travel product features from concept and market testing through MVP delivery, rollout, optimization, or deprecation.
• Translate partnership strategies and third-party capabilities into technical product requirements and integrations.
• Collaborate with partner product and engineering teams on cardmember features, inventory caching and search speed, and product SLA standards.
• Own the digital product experience across inspiration, search, dynamic packaging, points-plus-cash checkout, and post-booking support.
• Use data, travel perks, and targeted promotions to improve personalization, growth, and engagement.
• Lead ideation and delivery of AI-enabled travel products, including recommendation engines, contextual search, and conversational AI strategies.
• Partner with Data Analytics and Machine Learning teams on A/B and multivariate testing to improve conversion and personalization accuracy.
• Ensure AI and algorithmic products comply with Citi AI governance, ethical AI principles, model risk management, and data privacy policies.
• Work with USCC Brand, Loyalty, and Portfolio Marketing to incorporate value propositions into product touchpoints and feature launches.
• Deliver product capabilities supporting cardmember acquisition campaigns, milestone rewards, and seasonal travel promotions.
• Ensure travel products and booking workflows comply with Citi’s Risk and Control Framework, consumer protection laws, DOT/FTC travel regulations, ADA standards, and payment network rules.
• Prepare and present product initiatives to internal governance forums, including New Activity Committees and Third-Party Risk Management, Privacy, and InfoSec reviews.
• Maintain the required governance and control standards.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage
• 401(k)
• Life, accident, and disability insurance
• Wellness programs
• Paid time off, including vacation, sick leave, and paid holidays
• Discretionary and formulaic incentive and retention awards may be available to eligible employees
• Ongoing learning and development opportunities
• Programs supporting financial wellbeing, family needs, and work-life balance

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior