Senior Product Manager, Buyability & Selection, Retail Operations and Initiatives

Amazon South Africa is building out its Retail Operations and Initiatives function. This role owns the selection funnel: the path a product takes from being listed to being purchasable, discoverable, and delivered. Every friction point in that path is yours to find and fix. You will define the governance mechanisms, build the automation, and drive the cross-functional accountability that determines whether customers can buy what vendors make available. The model exists in peer markets; you are building it here from scratch with full ownership and direct visibility to country leadership.

Key job responsibilities

Own the end-to-end selection funnel and the weekly diagnostic that identifies where it leaks

Build the buyability defect taxonomy, the intake mechanism, and the triage SLAs from zero

Design and implement governance mechanisms for demand promise accuracy; migrate manual processes to automated, rules-based systems

Translate demand signals, competitive gaps, and funnel data into prioritised actions for Vendor Managers and In-Stock Managers

Partner with data engineering to build the intelligence layer that makes the funnel visible and actionable

Present funnel performance to store leadership; escalate blockers with clear business impact

Embed AI and automation into detection and governance workflows to scale without scaling headcount

A day in the life

Morning: the funnel. Conversion rates, defect queue, aged orders. You triage, escalate, and clear. Mid-morning: governance review with CS and In-Stock Management; you set the rules, they execute. Afternoon: deep in the data with your engineering partner, refining detection logic or reviewing a new dataset that just landed. Late afternoon: the vendor engagement loop; which products have demand but no supply, which suppliers need a nudge, what needs to change structurally. You close the day presenting the weekly diagnostic to leadership. No two days are the same. Most involve data, decisions, and moving something from blocked to buyable.

About the team

Retail Operations and Initiatives (RO&I) is the mechanism factory for Amazon South Africa. We build the scalable systems that remove operational friction from the retail pipeline, liberate commercial teams to focus on growth, and create the conditions for vendors to invest. The function is established in peer markets across Latin America, North America, and Europe. Small team, high ownership, zero tolerance for process debt. If you want to define how a marketplace operates rather than operate within someone else's definition, this is the role.