Senior Product Manager

We are: News UK is a great company full of talented, dedicated and creative people. We are an organisation that holds print, digital and radio journalism at its very heart. Our newspapers and digital products include some of the most powerful media brands in the English speaking world: the Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun – reaching 30 million people each week, as well as powerhouse radio stations, Virgin and Talksport, and their affiliate digital products.

We are Technology: a department with people and product at our heart. Passionate and trusted experts creating industry leading solutions through attracting and developing the best talent.  CTO of the Year (Tech Leaders) 2017, Christina Scott, leads the department and has worked for many years transforming technology teams in media companies. Your success is our success: we put our staff and their careers first. We’re  proud of our collaborative, fun culture and flexible working life.

Your team: Times New Business Ventures is an innovation unit focussed on the development and incubation of new digital revenues for The Times and Sunday Times. A new business unit, operating autonomously from the rest of the business. A rapidly expanding team made up of cross disciplinary experts who share an entrepreneurial passion for delivering purposeful and valuable customer experiences.

We are looking for a Product Manager to join us and play a pivotal role in the business, responsible for the delivery of a suite of new digital products within The  Times/Sunday Times portfolio. In partnership with key business owners and functional colleagues, you will steward new products through the stages of market opportunity identification, concept testing and validation, product incubation and scaling for growth.

Day to day you will:

  • Take a leadership role in a cross-disciplinary innovations team, being obsessed with bringing clarity to ‘best in class’ experiences, driving the delivery of new ideas and ventures (products and services) through from ideation to production
  • Lead a collaborative team, inspiring them to consistently deliver quality products with speed and creativity
  • Work with commercial, marketing, audience and editorial to understand what how they want to drive the business and be able to shape products to represent their needs, while also representing the audience
  • Provide clear direction for your team; make priority decisions in collaboration with your stakeholders and wider team, and be able to justify those decisions when needed
  • Work with others to sell your vision and the product journey.
  • You’ll encourage where you need to, and pivot and persuade where you need to.
  • Develop products from green-field MVP all the way to interventions on existing offerings
    create and test hypotheses, quickly and efficiently
  • Work with the Discipline Lead for Product to grow your career and learning opportunities, and to identify where you can contribute to the Product Community.
  • Our product managers are expected to be autonomous, strategic, accountable, highly communicative and inspirational to work with.
  • We expect our product managers to build the products they want to use; and to use those products in the same ways that our users do.

Who you are:

  • You’ve got a significant amount of experience working in an audience-led internet or media company in a product management capacity – not necessarily in news
  • An innovator, with a proven track record of managing and launching new products and services
  • You’re familiar with the machinations of ‘big corporates’ and the workings and politics of truly global organisations
  • Adept at working in an agile manner and pragmatic in how to apply it in practice
  • You’re a detail-oriented self-starter, with a positive attitude, capable of staying on track and discovering solutions to problems without supervision
  • Strong negotiation, organisational and facilitation skills. An excellent presenter with exemplary outcome-based meeting skills
  • Remain focused and disciplined, able to combine the tactical with the strategic, and balance the tiny details with the big picture
  • Excellent stakeholder management and negotiation skills, with a proven ability to break down silos and get the job done
  • You’re great at translating between the business and technical teams, bridging the communication gap and oiling the wheels of progress
  • You’re a compelling storyteller, who enjoys communicating concepts and ideas to engineers, peers, creatives and execs
  • You’re not afraid of saying no (for good reason). You bring with you product experience and user-driven passion, and are able to articulate recommendations with authority
  • Strong technical knowledge (Wordpress a preference but not essential)
  • You keep an eye on the industry and like to stay ahead of the curve with new technology concepts and ideas. You have a proven ability to bring these in to an organisation and make them real

To be considered you will have

  • Proven success in delivering online products and services in a high growth consumer facing role
  • Proven experience of driving product management best practices
  • Proven experience using data and analytics to underpin and driver your product strategy and customer value decisions
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

What’s in it for you? We are a diverse and dynamic team, with opportunities to learn and develop your skills in a supportive environment. We have an amazing office, a flexible working pattern and a great team culture. We’ll help you deliver your best work and grow you with career and personal development through training, conferences and courses.

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.

Benefits at NewsUK:

We take pride in looking after our amazing talent at News UK. Alongside pay, we offer:

  • A generous pension scheme with employer contributions of up to 8%;
  • A comprehensive private medical scheme covering pre-existing conditions;
  • Maternity leave of up to 18 weeks full basic salary and paternity leave of up 2 weeks full basic salary;
  • Discounted rates for Fitness First gym membership for employees and immediate family;
  • A range of different flexible working options, which can be requested by employees;
  • Interest free commuter loan of up to £10,000 tax free
  • ‘Bikes For Work’ scheme to save income tax and national insurance;
  • Up to four Volunteering Days per year for employees to use on charities of choice;
  • Health and wellbeing benefits including on-site physio/massage, counselling, legal advice, and others.

Tagged as: Flexible hours