Product Manager

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 Wireless, a leading UK and Irish media company boasting independent local and national radio stations including talkSPORT, VirginRadio, talkRADIO and Times Radio.

We are Technology: a department that has people and product at its heart. Lead by Christina Scott CTO of the Year (Tech Leaders) 2017, who comes with many years experience transforming technology in media companies. Christina has set out our vision of ‘passionate and trusted experts creating industry-leading solutions through attracting and developing the best talent’.

Our team: Content Platforms

Founded in 2019, Content Platforms is a technology team within News UK Tech that provides content planning, management, authoring, curation and distribution capabilities that allow the flexibility for reuse across News UK brands, enabling our content creators to deliver the most trusted and compelling journalism in the world. Our platform underpins some of the biggest publishing brands in the UK, including The Times and The Sunday Times, and the UK’s most widely read publication, The Sun. Content Platforms are poised to change the way our newsrooms create, develop and interact with content, helping to solve the major challenges of transforming to a digital first organisation while inspiring and empowering our newsrooms to expand their horizons and push the boundaries of how stories will be told in the future. We are an agile, cross-functional and diverse team of just over 50 strong, located in London, Sofia and Bangalore.

Your role: As the Product Manager for Planning you will own the vision and strategic direction for tools used by editorial teams across News UK to plan and commission their content. You will provide leadership and product direction to a cross-functional team that will iteratively develop and deliver innovative editorial tooling that aligns with the strategic direction of both News UK’s publications and wider News Corp platform ambitions. You will work in collaboration with Engineering, Editorial, Data and Commercial teams to develop a planning tool that will power new ways of working and innovation across our titles.

Day to day you will:

• Gain an intimate understanding of our editorial teams, newsrooms and journalistic working practices and the demands they face in a fast paced editorial environment

• Provide clear direction for a dedicated cross-functional team; make priority decisions in collaboration with your stakeholders and wider team, and be able to justify those decisions when needed

• Collaborate with senior stakeholders from Editorial and Commercial to produce a vision that will enable the digital ambition of our titles

• Take end-to-end responsibility for the creating and implementing product vision to build best-in-class planning tools that power digital thinking in our newsrooms

• Understand and/or have experience with the external digital publishing landscape, trends and innovations that will allow you to build industry-leading tools

• 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

• 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

Who you are:

• You’ve got experience building business critical workflows for planning or publishing services - not necessarily news

• An innovator, with a proven track record of managing and launching new features, products and services that power changing workflows

• You’re a detail-oriented self-starter, with a positive attitude, capable of staying on track and discovering solutions to problems - and ruthlessly prioritising when needed

• Strong negotiation, organisational and facilitation skills. An excellent presenter with exemplary outcome-based meeting skills

• 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 great at stakeholder management and breaking down silos.

• 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

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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 are remote first although we do 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.

NewsUK Benefits

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 5%;

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.

Flexible Working: At News UK some of us work flexibly, in many different ways. Please talk to us at the interview about the flexibility you need. We can’t promise to offer exactly what you want, but we do promise not to judge you for asking.

Equal opportunities:

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

News UK is an equal opportunities employer and is committed to providing equal opportunities for all its employees and applicants. We oppose all forms of discrimination in the workplace.

We thrive when we champion diversity and inclusion. We make better decisions, we’re stronger and happier, and it’s the right thing to do.