Director of Product Management

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Summary

The Director of Product will guide our product strategies across all our reader initiatives and platforms, including inquirer.com, mobile apps, live events, and newsletters. Overseeing a team of seven Product Managers, the Director will establish working processes, shape an overall product vision that unites our various workstreams, collaborate closely with design, engineering, and our Scrum practitioners to deliver updates to key stakeholders, and present both vision and tactics to broad groups within the company. This position reports to the Chief Technology and Product Officer.

What You’ll Do

• Partner with the Chief Technology and Product Officer to build and execute our long-term product strategy
• With our Analytics team, use observed and reported data to adjust our roadmaps, identify new opportunities, and decommission products / features
• Manage and support seven Product Managers, each focused on a different reader archetype / need state
• Collaborate with stakeholders from all other departments, particularly Editorial, Marketing, and Advertising
• Partner with newsroom producers and editors to support editorial projects with necessary product enhancements
• Provide feedback on design artifacts, ensuring that our product vision is implemented clearly and consistently
• Evolve our internal tools and systems used to manage our processes around product development
• Incorporate innovations and findings from our Lenfest Lab into our product roadmap, and suggest experiments and research efforts for the Lab to pursue
• Evangelize leading practices in product and design-thinking

Who We’re Looking For

• Five to seven years of experience in managing product lifecycles, ideally over several releases / cycles of evolution
• Understanding of the fundamentals of subscriber-driven media, and the ways in which ad revenues both support and challenge these fundamentals
• Excellent organizational and communication skills, particularly when speaking with stakeholders and participants who are unfamiliar with product development fundamentals
• Experience mentoring and/or managing product managers, including providing constructive feedback and developing performance improvement plans
• Desire to support journalistic efforts, and alignment with our mission to inform and inspire the people in the Philadelphia region
• Friendly, respectful and collaborative in interactions with colleagues. You offer candid feedback about how they and the company can improve and expect it in return.

Helpful Qualities

• Prior experience within a news organization, particularly experience managing news distribution efforts
• Experience as a developer or technical project / product manager, including selecting tools and evaluating features with an eye toward feasibility
• Familiarity with JIRA and Confluence
• Familiarity with managing remote and mixed in-office / remote teams