Group Product Manager, Publishing

Purpose of the Role
The Financial Times is looking for a visionary product leader who can connect the hundreds of stories told by our reporters around the world each day with our global audience reading and watching those stories on their phones, tablets and computers. Content is the heart of our business. It is our most important asset.

As Group Product Manager of Content, you will understand its value. You’ll connect our content with our readers by developing our publishing services through a coherent framework underpinned by APIs and metadata. We are looking for someone who will relish the challenge of continuing our transformation from a print-led publisher to a digital-led business.

Our vision is to make best use of our APIs to build exciting and dynamic products on top of them. A key part of this is being able to envisage future services, seeing beyond the simple presentation of things to how content is formed and can be restructured and shaped into new products. The team will be looking for someone who can lead with great ideas for products and in return we will give you the team to deliver them.

You will be required to have an understanding of the current and future publishing world – full of sites, apps, data, and feeds on various operating systems and devices. You need to have a clear view on how to build a strategy to package and deliver content to all these points.

You will also focus more broadly on how we build the right structures to share content across the FT group and how it links together using metadata and linked data principles.

To be successful, you will need to have technical, editorial and commercial acumen.

• You need to be technical enough to know how to deal strategically with the technical elements of managing content (including content management systems and metadata) and lead a strong development team.
• You need to work alongside editorial to understand in detail how content is created at the FT and the impact that any changes on publishing platforms may have on the workflow and productivity of the editorial team.
• You need to understand the commercial imperatives around how we package our content for subscription and syndication sales now and in the future.
Ultimately, we are looking for someone who can bring some new flair to the development of content products. Impress us…

In this role you will…

As Group Product Manager of Publishing, you will:
• Lead the Publishing Programme as the Executive Product Owner – and prove proficient at negotiating the middle ground between editorial and commercial stakeholders and technical developers.
• Define and execute the programme vision, strategy, investment case and roadmap. Specifically, you will create the vision for how our content systems connect using APIs and metadata to our customers and other services.
• Manage the system life-cycle from strategic planning to delivery of tactical activities that optimise business value – balance the need for technical platform improvements with the need for customer-facing features.
• Work in partnership with the technical team to define project scope and deliver requirements within Agile Scrum and Kanban frameworks.
• Articulate progress and manage expectations of board-level sponsors and stakeholders. This requires you to have a sound understanding of technical options so these can be presented and assessed.
• Collaborate extensively across the business to deliver value for our B2C and B2B customers, supporting among others Editorial, Marketing, Customer Services, Technology, Advertising, Business Intelligence and Finance whilst working in harmony with the other investment programmes.
• Be the hands-on Product Owner for multiple streams within the Programme, defining scope, user stories and managing the backlog.
• Inspire and support the Editorial team in defining new editorial packages.
• Bring awareness of emerging practices and technologies in content management, APIs and semantic metadata to programme team and stakeholders.
• Manage third party relationships to further optimise the publishing ecosystem.
• Analyse success metrics against original objectives, feeding back outcomes.

You’ll bring to the role…

• Have minimum of 6 years of experience developing enterprise-level, digital products
• A strong working knowledge of content structures and APIs, with experience building APIs in a digital publishing stack and the important things to consider around managing content and metadata
• Understand the workflows of a news business, how they work and how they will change.
• Ability to communicate a vision and present this with sharp, focused clarity to different teams within the business.
• You have a solid track record of solving the needs of external and internal customers with innovative use of technology.
• Have extensive experience working with Agile projects at scale, with several different streams and different stakeholders.
• Experienced line manager who has directly managed people for at least 3 years.
• Experienced in influencing and managing senior stakeholders.
• Follow trends in publishing industry.
• Preferably educated to degree level in Computer Science/Engineering/Information Systems or similar technical field
Skills
• Excellent communicator at all levels, a natural evangelist who is passionate about product and technology. You have a particular zeal for making stories come to life in digital formats.
• Able to understand the technology components of content systems and have experience engaging in debate with technical leads.
• Demonstrate superior business judgment based on skills, intuition and experience.
• Proven record delivering products through collaboration with key stakeholders and technical teams.
• Ability to back up your opinions with data and clear well-structured cases.
• Have a record of establishing credibility with technical leaders as well as leaders throughout the business.
• Strong numerical, analytical and verbal skills; quick thinker and clear communicator.
• Ability to develop metrics and reporting that can be communicated across technical and non-technical business units
Attitude
• You are execution focused and have a proven record of success in complex environments.
• Results-driven, high-performing, high-quality work attitude
• Have a strong personal interest in the news media, relishing the chance to help build the future of one of the great global brands in media
• You must demonstrate the maturity to work independently on a day-to-day basis and have the wisdom to know when to collaborate, delegate and/or escalate.

In return, we’ll give you…..
• A competitive salary and bonus/commission scheme
• Extensive learning and development opportunities
• An office in the heart of London near St Paul’s, London Bridge and next door to Borough market
• 25 days annual leave, increasing to 30 after 2 years
• Subsidised gym membership
• 50% off all Penguin and DK books
• Pension plan (FT will double your contribution up to a maximum of 16%)
• Season ticket loan
• Private Healthcare / Dental plan
• Life assurance up to 4 x annual salary
• Pearson Share Save Scheme
• Bike to work scheme
• Childcare vouchers
• Give As You Earn

The Financial Times Ltd. is a Pearson company. Pearson is committed to equality of opportunity. We are determined to create a diverse group at all levels of our company — and we welcome all members of the community we serve to apply for openings with us.