About Us

The Athletic is a digital sports media company that brings true sports fans closer to the athletes, teams and leagues that captivate their attention. We serve a multi-faceted audience that craves a richer connection and understanding with immersive storytelling and a like-minded community of fans. Founded in 2016 and with major operational hubs in San Francisco, Los Angeles, London and Melbourne, we empower a truly global team of more than 600 creators and cover more than 250 professional sports and collegiate teams across the United States, Canada and the UK. Our newsroom has produced thousands of in-depth reports along with more than 120 podcasts and other forms of premium content. Put simply, The Athletic is at the center of a sports fan’s universe.

About the Role

Product plays a pivotal role at The Athletic, spearheading critical cross-functional initiatives and leading teams of engineers, designers, marketers, and analysts to execute seamlessly on behalf of the business and our users. As a Director of Product, you will be a key strategic and operational leader, partnering closely with company executives and leading one or more Product Managers. This is an advanced role, and you will be critical to the success of the Product organization and company at large. You will report to the VP of Product.

This role is 100% remote for candidates currently residing in either the United States or Canada.

Responsibilities

Own the strategy and roadmap for 1 or more product areas:
Define the strategy and vision for your product area(s) to meet business objectives.
Leverage existing expertise in your domain area(s) (e.g., Platform and Technical Product) and a clear understanding of user and technical needs.
Partner closely on strategy and execution with tech executives across product, design, engineering, data, marketing, and the newsroom.
Own a multi-team roadmap that balances long term and short term considerations.
Drive impact:
Lead large cross-functional working group(s) on key strategic initiatives.
Work closely with the rest of the Product team to align initiatives and dependencies.
Report on impact and learnings to key executive stakeholders.
Lead a team of 1 or more Product Managers:
Develop the careers of your direct report Product Managers.
Foster a highly collaborative and productive environment.
Inform the work of other teams through direct and indirect mechanisms, including mentoring other PM colleagues as appropriate.
Improve organizational operations:
Work closely with other tech leaders on operational improvements.
Invest smartly in platforms and processes to ship and experiment at scale.

Requirements

4+ years of highly relevant product leadership experience including a team or functional leadership role.
Clear strategic strengths, from goal setting to strategy development to communication and reporting.
Expertise in consumer digital products.
Technical expertise to partner closely with Engineering on technical decisions.
Executional capabilities including cross-functional initiative leadership - you need to get things done in addition to guide the work.
Demonstrated experience being a people manager your team learns from and is excited to work with.
High familiarity with and love for sports and journalism.
Excellence with data - analyzing data, deriving insights, and making data-driven decisions.
User-centric mentality.
Eagerness to try new things and learn - and a willingness to fail.

Focus of the Role

Your primary focus is to own the Product Platforms strategy (web, iOS, Android), and in turn to contribute to the Engineering / Technical Platforms strategy.
Consumer - Web, iOS, Android.
Internal - CMS, A/B testing, Push and Delivery Pipeline.
Our Platforms strategy must enable all tech teams at The Athletic to deliver business and user impact efficiently and effectively; you are serving the business directly and by enabling internal teams.
Key areas include page performance, technical SEO, experimentation, and delivery.
To succeed you will need to provide thoughtful leadership on strategy, systems, and processes; specific ownership areas include:
Strategic: owning the Product Platform strategy and contributing to Technical strategy.
Initiative-based: owning key cross-functional platform-related initiatives, including those that are large strategic priorities led by Platform teams, and important ones supported by the Platform teams.
Organizational: assessing the needs for, and building, a team of 1 or more PMs to drive product roadmaps and project execution across Platform teams.
Operational: ensuring that consumer-facing Product Managers and Eng Teams are connected into the Platforms strategies and roadmaps, and capacity is allocated to product teams’ needs are prioritized.
Provide transparency to the impact and effectiveness of our Platform teams through metrics such as change fail rate, lead time, deployment frequency, mean time to recovery, and other metrics that offer insights into productivity and quality.
In addition to reporting to the VP of Product for The Athletic, you will also partner closely with:
Our VP of Engineering and Engineering Director of Platforms, on The Athletic’s Platform strategy.
The New York Times’ Platform Team leadership, to advocate for The Athletic’s platform needs, and to evaluate the potential impact of integrating within existing NYT platforms.

The annual base salary range for this role is $165,000.00 - $195,000.00 USD. The total compensation offered for this position may vary based on factors such as education, experience, skills, and location. It may also include non-cash rewards and benefits. The base salary range is subject to change and may be modified in the future.

The Athletic offers unique perks and benefits to all full-time employees based on their country of residence. Our comprehensive US benefits package includes:

- Highly competitive, employer-contributed medical, dental, vision, basic life and disability insurance plans.

- Savings accounts for medical, wellness, and childcare expenses.

- 401k retirement savings plan and employer match.

- Paid time off including paid sick leave, 12 paid holidays, 15 days of accrued vacation to start, and up to 20 weeks of Paid Parental Leave.

For international candidates: Our global benefits packages offer similar benefits and perks, competitive to the local market.

The Athletic Media Company is an equal opportunity employer and enthusiastically encourages people from all backgrounds and experiences to apply. The Athletic will consider all applicants without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, physical and/or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, age, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law.

Click here to review our Applicant Privacy Notice, which describes how and when The Athletic Media Company collects, uses, and shares certain personal information of job applicants and prospective employees.

Beware of fraudulent job recruiting schemes! Our recruiters use [email protected] exclusively. We do not conduct interviews via text or instant message and we do not ask candidates to download software, to purchase equipment through us, or to provide sensitive personally identifiable information, such as bank accounts or social security numbers. If you have been contacted by someone claiming to be a recruiter with The Athletic but operating from a different email address about a job offer, please report it as potential job fraud to the law enforcement and to [email protected].

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Director of Engineering, Core Platforms