Director, Product, Consumer Growth

Job Description

Job Summary

As the Director of Product for the Consumer Growth team, you will set the product vision for The Washington Post's subscriber acquisition and retention portfolios. This role requires a passion for building great products, a strong technical background, excellent communication and people skills, and a track record of successful product management in a fast-paced environment. You will work closely with cross-functional teams including news & editorial, marketing, engineering, and data analytics to ensure that the products we build meet the needs of our users and deliver desired outcomes for the company. Your teams will be responsible for experimenting with innovative new registration and purchase journeys on the website, optimizing our payment services and accepted currencies, launching and scaling critical partner integrations, developing our suite of ecommerce business tools, creating compelling in-product education touchpoints that move users up the ladder of engagement, and maintaining best-in-class user account and authentication applications.

You will report to the Head of Product and collaborate with product leaders across the organization to cultivate the next generation of Post subscribers and develop a high-performing team of product leads and managers. Your primary partners are the Chief Subscriptions Officer and the Subscription Marketing team, for whom you will be a critical player in increasing monthly subscription starts, improving revenue per user, and decreasing subscriber churn.

Motivation

• You thrive in complex situations and are committed to achieving shared clarity by identifying the most important problems to solve, evaluating opportunities, and weighing the needs of our readers with those of our business in a transparent, collaborative manner.
• You are comfortable making difficult prioritization decisions and communicating the rationale behind your decisions to all levels in the company.
• You have experience leading teams and consider mentorship one of your key abilities.
• You act as a force-multiplier, building empowered product teams and attracting top talent.
• You are a strong communicator, able to articulate your point-of-view, engage in fact-based discourse, collaborate, compromise, and bridge gaps. You enjoy the challenge of painting compelling product visions to align and inspire your teams and stakeholders.
• You are focused, driven, and the natural owner of both big ideas and practical daily output and feel most at home in a fast-paced, iterative, and collaborative environment.
• You are fluid and adaptable, able to work on multiple tracks and pivot from one project to another.
• You love to take a broad view of the product landscape and focus on user experience design, data analysis, and using data-driven insights to make informed decisions.
• You are energized by cross-functional collaboration and enjoy distilling insights and requests from all parts of the company to ensure successful execution of the subscription growth product roadmap.

Responsibilities

• Drive meaningful outcomes for the business and stakeholders by defining the product vision for the Subscription Growth Team, directing the creation of clear roadmaps with prioritized features and initiatives mapped to the company's strategic goals, and aligning cross-functional teams to deliver on these plans.
• Identify, plan for, and resolve critical dependencies across roadmaps and tracks of work by proactively aligning your team's priorities with those of the broader product management group.
• Manage team capacity and efficiently use available resources by de-prioritizing initiatives that do not align with your vision and reorganizing teams. Communicate those decisions to stakeholders and senior management with appropriate quantitative and qualitative data.
• Manage and mentor direct reports and empower them to successfully deliver on their product areas, deliver meaningful outcomes, and achieve their career objectives by setting clear expectations and providing regular guidance.
• Stay ahead of the competition by surveying the industry landscape, identifying trends, and recommending strategic opportunities to senior management.
• Transparently share your team's plans and progress by presenting your vision, strategy, work product, insights, and KPIs in company-wide forums, executive sessions, and team meetings, tailoring your communication appropriately for the audience.
• Create exceptional product experiences that solve user problems, delivering features for key user segments, by working closely with product design leadership to create and test hypotheses. Build, test, learn, and increment.
• Use data to generate actionable insights and leverage those insights to achieve the goals set for your team by proactively seeking out the product intelligence you need.
• Balance inputs from business, design, research, technology, and external teams. Create a network of cross-functional partners. Build rapport and earn trust.
• Define and evangelize best practices for the product team and the subscriptions portfolio. Collaborate on the planning and building of scalable and extensible tools and resources.
• Lead and mentor others, providing strategic direction, thought leadership, and inspiration to your direct reports and members of the wider product team.
• Define metrics, create objectives and drive cadences that track progress, managing through obstacles to achieve those objectives.
• Directly debate with and influence leadership to achieve business outcomes.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in Product Management, 3 in a leadership position, with a track record of building a shared vision and delivering desired outcomes
• Familiarity with subscription or ecommerce products, preferably in the media industry
• A passion for working with cross-functional teams to creatively solve complex user problems
• Experience delivering software at scale, managing product solutions with multiple stakeholders, and leading teams to achieve their potential
• Fluency in using product analytics to inform decision making and prioritization
• An established track record working with executive-level partners
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills and the ability to tactfully negotiate agreements between stakeholders with conflicting priorities
• Experience conducting multivariate testing, as well as assessing results and providing recommendations
• Experience working in an Agile software development environment

Wherever you are in your life or career, The Washington Post offers comprehensive and inclusive benefits for every step of your journey:

• Competitive medical, dental and vision coverage
• Company-paid pension and 401(k) match
• Three weeks of vacation and up to three weeks of paid sick leave
• Nine paid holidays and two personal days
• 20 weeks paid parental leave for any new parent
• Robust mental health resources
• Backup care and caregiver concierge services
• Gender affirming services
• Pet insurance
• Free Post digital subscription
• Leadership and career development programs

Benefits may vary based on the job, full-time or part-time schedule, location, and collectively bargained status.

The Post strives to provide its readers with high-quality, trustworthy news and information while constantly innovating. That mission is best served by a diverse, multi-generational workforce with varied life experiences and perspectives. All cultures and backgrounds are welcomed.

The innovation doesn't end in the Newsroom - dozens of teams power The Washington Post. We are now hiring the next innovator - how will you Impact Tomorrow?

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