Full-Time England, United Kingdom

Director of Product, The Sun

We are: News UK is a company full of talented, dedicated and creative people. We are an ambitious and ever-growing organisation with a passion for storytelling, capturing moments, meaning and magic to make sense of the world. Our newspapers reach more than 30 million people each week and include The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times. News UK is also home to Unruly, a global ad tech company, and Wireless, a leading UK and Irish media company boasting independent local and national radio stations.

Your role: You will report to the Chief Technology Officer, and play a pivotal role in the business, being responsible for the product vision and delivery of existing and new high-volume, high-velocity, digital products across The Sun portfolio (Sun website and app, off Platform offerings, Sun Savers). You will own the product digital roadmap and delivery of all consumer-facing features for The Sun, and its brand extensions. You will use innovation and technologies to grow the brand with a laser focus on producing measurable results, delivering growing revenues, increasing audience share and deepening user engagement whilst reinforcing the distinctive Sun brand.

Day to day you will:

Develop a focused, realistic and achievable vision that drives page views and financial growth on core editorial content and brand extensions. Translate the business strategy into a product vision and strategy.
Agree on business goals and success metrics (commercial and experience metrics) with senior stakeholders that are relevant to each business, and be accountable against those metrics.
Work with senior stakeholders in Editorial, Commercial, Marketing to generate ideas and develop them into viable features that build the future of the brand and business.
Lead a cross-functional team of passionate, talented staff to successfully grow The Sun’s portfolio of products. Your team will be made up of Product Managers, delivery staff, business analysts, front-end engineers and UX&D. Your team will have full ownership over the definition, delivery, operational performance and support of all The Sun digital products.
Own the communications around the portfolio – be the single source of truth for stakeholders and customers, articulating a consistent and clear story
Develop a world-class culture of continuous and rapid innovation and learning, user centred and data-driven with a focus on delivering business value
Use customer research and feedback, market data, rich usage analytics and industry trends to anticipate market, business and technology changes and to drive decisions.
Champion the continued investment in The Sun portfolio, including leading or overseeing the business case process.
Alongside your peers, Director of Product, The Times and Director of Product, Wireless, you will input into the longer term overall News UK product and technology roadmap. You will work in collaboration with News UK platform teams who are building reusable technology components to accelerate the speed to market of new products, increase functionality available to all brand titles and to reduce duplication across our Brands.
Manage products through the Product Development Lifecycle, applying lifecycle analysis to determine appropriate investment levels and when to transition or retire products and features.
Maintain a keen awareness of digital trends and their potential for commercial application and improved user journey.

What we’re looking for from you:

Exceptional stakeholder management, you are a real people person who enjoys working with passionate stakeholders with strong beliefs and views.
Excellent influencing skills, to sell a vision and convince people to buy into that vision.
A leader that empowers and inspires the members of your team.
Well-honed business acumen and commercial skills particularly around advertising, personalisation and analytics.
Experience in a competitive commercial market place and challenging environments where you have learnt to adapt quickly to change. You thrive where change is constant. You are skilled at recovering quickly from setbacks and changes. A resilient mindset.
A proven history of strategy development and an ability to focus on the longer-term whilst delivering day to day plans and roadmaps.
Proven experience in full ownership of digital products in a fast-paced and technical environment and managing a portfolio of digital products at different stages of maturity.
Excellent listening skills, to determine where new information or opinions from stakeholders and subject matter experts should result in amendments to the product roadmap.

What’s in it for you?

We love our business and what we do. We want you to love work as much as we do so we will offer on-the-job training and development enabling you to be the best you can be. In addition, we are a fun-loving, collaborative team who have a social committee and are often found socialising together.

Many of our staff work flexibly in many different ways, including part-time. Please talk to us at interview about the flexibility you need. We can’t promise to give you exactly what you want, but we won’t judge you for asking.

Equal opportunities:

The Company is an equal opportunities employer and wholeheartedly supports the principle of equal opportunities for all its employees and for all applicants for employment. It opposes all forms of discrimination in the workplace.

We are a diverse and team so want to maximise every individual’s potential to create a productive environment where everyone feels valued, and where talents are fully recognised and utilised.

This means affording equal access to any employment opportunities within the Company according to your ability, without prejudice or discrimination by reason of race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion, belief, gender, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, marital status, disability or age.