Job Description

In this role, you will be responsible for maintaining and evolving Ranker taxonomies and metadata structures for all content categories represented in multiple consumer and business-facing products and services including Ranker.com, Watchworthy, and Ranker Insights. 

Your focus will be on Ranker’s Lists and Rankings covering Pop Culture and Media and Entertainment topics including TV, Film, Celebrities, Music, Video Games, Books, Consumer Products and Brands.

You will also own the auditing of internal processes, tools, and systems to identify the best ways to organize content, measure content coverage, and ensure optimum levels in all key categories. You will also make sure that Ranker’s goals, priorities and efforts around gathering & organizing data between various departments are well-coordinated and understood by everyone.

You will coordinate and lead the implementation of any changes made to our data taxonomy and/or efforts to collect data, and oversee the editorial aspects specifically related to Rankings and collecting voting data.

Finally, you will advocate for taxonomy standards that provide the best user experience internally and externally.

WHAT YOU'LL DO:

• Develop, evaluate, and manage taxonomy strategies and vision, developing roadmaps and project plans to continually improve content accessibility & browsing;

• Work with internal and external clients to develop specific taxonomies and controlled vocabularies based on data sources, input from sponsors and user feedback;

• Conduct iterative evaluations of taxonomy design based on user feedback (usability testing, interviews, cognitive walk-through, heuristic reviews);

• Develop governance models, frameworks, and documentation around tags, to support the effective content discovery and enabling meaningful search results;

• Work closely with Editorial team and product managers to implement an efficient & tailored tags management system (be accountable for business requirements related to taxonomy tools);

• Develop relations between tags & classification to facilitate understanding & connect efficiently content to people (via parent terms, synonyms, related terms, etc);

• Analyze tags & metadata usage to make informed decisions on how to improve our users’ ability to find content across our digital workplace;

• Manage the evaluation, selection and onboarding of any 3rd party data source used to augment Ranker’s proprietary data sources.

• Oversee all aspects that relate to consistency and comprehensiveness of our “poll lists” as well as moderation and cleanup of all nodes on lists

• Monitor appropriate voters and votes coverage levels for key lists and nodes and collaborate with product teams to define the right KPIs and with the Editorial team to put in place the right programs to address any potential gaps in coverage 

• Animate a network of internal taxonomist advocates;

• Raise awareness for tags & metadata usage among internal teams;

• Stay up to date regarding taxonomy trends & share them with team members;

• Carry out all other related tasks.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED:

• Experience in Taxonomy, Ontology or Metadata management.

• Experience with metadata, subject classification, description cataloging, and user experience

• Proven success in creating and managing large and complex taxonomies.

• Experience in classifying and organizing deep and broad libraries of TV and Film and other media and entertainment content categories.

• Candidates must provide recent examples of their ability to improve information accessibility via a strategy and an action plan that include a taxonomy, an ontology or a metadata schemes.

SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE:

• Knowledge of taxonomy, ontology and folksonomy disciplines and trends.

• Ability to implement and analyze research and metrics reporting to make informed decisions.

• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills, and a genuine interest in making continuous improvements to taxonomies based on ongoing data analysis and business inputs.

• Excellent analytical, organizational, project management and time management skills.

• Excellent communication skills with an ability to clearly explain complex ideas verbally and in writing.

• Ability to self-motivate and self-manage while also acting as a team player.

• Passionate about apps and website usability and the role of metadata in improving user experiences.

• Positive attitude, initiative & leadership skills are a must!

ACADEMIC BACKGROUND:

• University degree in Library, Information Science or any relevant discipline. Master's of Library Science (MLIS) preferred

JOB LOCATION:

• Los Angeles, CA

ABOUT RANKER/WATCHWORTHY:

Ranker, a Quantcast Top 50 site in the US, attracts more than 20 million monthly unique visitors worldwide and is the leader in fan-powered rankings on just about everything. Whatever the topic - TV, movies, video games, sports, brands, food, lifestyle - Ranker puts the vote into the hands of millions rather than a few critics to answer the questions we are most passionate about. Over 1 billion votes now power Ranker Insights, a treasure trove of psychographic correlation data that delivers personalized consumer recommendations (“if you like X, you’ll also like Y, Z”), and also audience insights to marketers, studios, and platforms seeking a deeper understanding of consumer tastes and preferences. Launched in 2020 and powered by Ranker Insights, Watchworthy is the only statistically relevant, crowd-sourced TV recommendation app available to consumers. Ranker made #187 on Deloitte’s 2019 Technology Fast 500 featuring the fastest growing companies in North America and Built In LA’s Top 50 Mid-Sized Companies To Work For in 2020. Headquartered in Los Angeles, Ranker also has offices in Chicago and NYC.