Principal Product Manager – 12 month contract

The Economist Group is the leading source of analysis on international business and world affairs. We deliver world-class, thought provoking content through a range of formats, from web and app, to newspapers and magazines, conferences, film and audio. What ties us together is the objectivity of our opinion, the originality of our insight and our advocacy of economic and political freedom around the world.

With a growing global subscriber base and a reputation for insightful analysis and opinion on every aspect of world events, The Economist is one of the most widely recognised and well-read current affairs publications and the foundation of our digital consumer product portfolio.

We are developing a world-class product management organisation and have an exciting opportunity for a Senior Product Manager to help us define and develop the user experience in our mobile apps.

We are looking for a Principal Product Manager to lead and define our suite of products under the “Content Production and Distribution (CPD)” domain. The teams’ primary focus is on creating frictionless editorial tools that empower our editorial teams to produce distinctive, diverse and innovative digital content with ease and efficacy, and distributing that content to both internal teams and external clients in a way that optimises availability, reliability and security. This is a rare opportunity for someone to bring their subject matter expertise to shape the product and culture at a point of real change and momentum in The Economist organisation.

The Principal Product Manager will report to the Head of Content Products and will play a critical role in overseeing the product development and product management of our content production and distribution missions.

Organisation:

  • Reports to the Heads of Product
  • Line management of product managers in the CPD domain (max 3)
  • Close working with senior functional stakeholders, particularly editorial; front-end product teams and client solutions; and third-party suppliers

How you will contribute:

  • You’ll lead on major change initiatives across your Content Production & Distribution domain, and will lead, shape and improve the product development process across your teams and the wider product department
  • You’ll use research, analytics data, market research, competitor insight and your own instincts to help The Economist make the best products possible
  • You’ll work closely with your stakeholders and teams to design and deliver editorial tools and distribution systems, measure their success, lead the prioritisation process and the creation and maintenance of the CPD roadmap
  • You’ll be able to lean on your extensive experience of managing content management systems, content models and content distribution tools to help define the CPD product strategy, and evangelise this strategy to senior leaders as well as your teams
  • You will have experience coaching and mentoring product colleagues
  • You’ll work in close collaboration with cross-functional partners, from editorial to client solutions, to define requirements, ideate hypotheses and solutions
  • You’ll be comfortable liaising and collaborating with third-party suppliers
  • You’ll bring experience of agile product development and a test-and-learn culture
  • You’ll be able to confidently lead and collaborate with your agile teams of product managers, designers, developers, QA and delivery leads, using agile methodologies to their full potential
  • You’ll have laser focus on value prioritisation and impact for the business and editorial users, balancing delivery and quality at all times
  • You’ll bring experience of story mapping, ideation workshops and roadmap planning
  • You’ll bring experience of working in digital media organisations with a history of building strong editorial relationships and management of CMS and other editorial tools

The ideal skills for this role are:

  • Builder: Someone who has built great products and user journeys that are frictionless and functional
  • Listener: A great listener who can understand user and business needs
  • Documenter: Someone strong on documenting user stories, use cases, workflows, requirements and dependencies
  • Leader: Adept at setting strategy, evangelising the products across the organisation, leading and coaching product managers, and escalating where necessary
  • Communicator: A great communicator who is able to explain their vision of what the product needs to do both to internal technology teams and cross-functional stakeholders
  • Technical: Someone who can get into the tech details of a back-end platform or product to understand how to get the most out of it
  • Curious: Someone who is interested in asking the right questions with the goal of producing quality results
  • Humble: Someone who will seek opportunities to learn and grow your hard and soft skills through feedback and self-reflection