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

The Head of Product, Innovation and AI – Citi Travel, Senior Vice President is a pivotal senior leadership role accountable for leading the travel product organization and executing the end-to-end product strategy across Citi Travel. Reporting directly to the Director – Head of Travel Partnerships, Customer Experience & AI, this role will serve as the principal product executive responsible for translating strategic travel priorities into high-impact digital experiences, leading a cross-functional product team, and driving customer engagement, conversion, and business outcomes across travel loyalty platforms.

This position acts as the primary product leader overseeing the travel ecosystem, translating business and partnership strategies into world-class booking engines and itinerary management capabilities. The Head of Product will blend deep travel industry domain expertise (pricing, inventory, ticketing, GDS/OTA connectivity, ancillary merchandising) with targeted AI-driven capabilities (smart search, dynamic recommendations, proactive disruption management) to drive Gross Bookings Value, conversion, cardmember retention, and exceptional traveler satisfaction.

Responsibilities:

Product Organization Leadership & Operating Model

Lead & Scale the Product Organization: Build, mentor, and lead a high-performing team of Product Managers across multiple agile monthly releases.

Institute Travel Product Management Standards: Define product discovery and delivery frameworks tailored to complex travel systems, including booking funnel optimization, multi-supplier API orchestration, release planning, and KPI instrumentation.

Drive Product Management Excellence: Establish best-in-class product management practices, frameworks, and discovery-to-delivery lifecycles (OKRs, customer journey mapping, hypothesis-driven experimentation, and backlog governance).

Foster Cross-Functional Collaboration: Serve as the strategic anchor uniting Technology, Digital UX/UI Design, Analytics, Marketing, Customer Experience and Servicing and Business Owners around a cohesive product vision.

Talent Development & Culture: Cultivate a culture of innovation, data fluency, accountability, customer obsession and collaboration.

Product Strategy & Roadmap Execution

End-to-End Roadmap Ownership: In close alignment with the Director, define and execute multi-year product roadmaps that support growth, premium cardmember retention and travel volume expansion.

Inventory, Pricing & Merchandising Rules: Optimize inventory display logic, cache refresh strategies, supplier markup/discount rules, and ancillary cross-sell modules throughout the booking funnel.

Outcome-Driven Prioritization: Balance competing business, partner, technological, and customer priorities using rigorous quantitative evaluation and value-scoring frameworks.

Product Lifecycle Management: Direct the lifecycle of all travel product features from initial concept, market testing, and MVP delivery through to full-scale rollout, optimization, or deprecation.

Partner & Platform Product Integration

Operationalize Strategic Partnerships: Translate partnership strategy and third-party capabilities (e.g., travel aggregators, global distribution systems, hotel/airline content partners) into robust technical product requirements and integrations.

Partner Co-Innovation & SLA Governance: Work directly with partner product and engineering counterparts to co-create bespoke cardmember features, optimize inventory caching/search speeds, and enforce product SLA standards.

Customer Experience (CX) & Journey Ownership

Full Journey Management: Own the digital product experience across the complete travel lifecycle—from inspiration, search, dynamic packaging, and points-plus-cash checkout to post-booking support.

Personalization & Loyalty Mechanics: intuitive data utilization, differentiation of travel perks, and targeted promotional booking accelerators to drive growth and engagement.

AI & Digital Innovation

Deploy AI-Enabled Travel Products: Lead the product ideation and delivery of AI-driven capabilities, including intelligent recommendation engines, contextual search, conversational AI strategies.

Data & Experimentation Strategy: Partner with Data Analytics and Machine Learning teams to implement continuous A/B and multivariate testing frameworks that optimize booking conversion and personalization accuracy.

Enterprise Standards Alignment: Ensure all AI and algorithmic product models adhere strictly to Citi’s AI governance, ethical AI principles, model risk management, and data privacy policies.

Marketing & Customer Value Proposition (CVP) Enablement

Product-Driven Growth: Collaborate with USCC Brand, Loyalty, and Portfolio Marketing to translate core value propositions into engaging digital product touchpoints and go-to-market feature rollouts.

Acquisition & Engagement Enablement: Deliver product capabilities that support cardmember acquisition campaigns, milestone rewards, and seasonal travel promotions.

Risk, Governance & Controls

Control Framework & Compliance: Ensure all travel digital products and booking workflows comply with Citi’s Risk and Control Framework, consumer protection laws, DOT/FTC travel industry regulations, ADA standards, and payment network rules.

Governance & Approvals: Lead the preparation and presentation of product initiatives through internal governance forums, including New Activity Committees, Third-Party Risk Management, Privacy, and InfoSec reviews.maintain these standards.

Qualifications:

10–14+ years of relevant experience in digital product management, consumer platforms, travel technology (OTA/GDS), loyalty/rewards, or marketplace ecosystems.

Leadership Experience: Proven track record of leading, managing, and developing product management teams within a large, matrixed financial services or high-scale consumer tech organization.

Execution & Delivery: Demonstrated success in taking complex, multi-million-dollar digital products and partner integrations from strategy to scalable production delivery.

Technical & Analytical Acumen: Proficiency in modern API architectures, cloud-native platforms, AI/ML product applications, data analytics, and agile product delivery methodologies.

• •Partner & Stakeholder Management: Substantial experience collaborating with senior external technology/content partners as well as executive stakeholders across business, technology, operations, legal, and compliance.10+ years related product sales experience.
• •Product Leadership & Vision: Ability to articulate a compelling product vision and rally multidisciplinary teams to execute against strategic outcomes.

Enterprise Influencing: Exceptional communication, storytelling, and negotiation skills to influence senior leadership and align cross-functional partners.

Execution Discipline: Relentless focus on delivery excellence, removing blockers, and managing complex dependencies in fast-paced, ambiguous environments.

Customer Centricity: Passion for understanding customer pain points and designing intuitive, frictionless, and delight-inducing digital experiences.

Risk & Control Mindset: Proactive commitment to managing operational, compliance, and third-party risks while maintaining agility.

Education:

Bachelor’s/University degree, Master’s degree/MBA preferred

What We Offer

You will join a global product organization at the center of Citi's travel and loyalty strategy, with the scale and resources to shape experiences used by millions of cardmembers.

• •Lead high-impact AI and travel product initiatives with visibility to senior executives across the business.
• •Work in a hybrid arrangement with 3 days in the office and 2 days working remotely each week.
• •Collaborate with product, technology, and partner teams across a global organization.
• •Access ongoing learning and development opportunities to grow your leadership and te