Principal Product Manager

Principal Product Manager - The Times

London/Hybrid

Reports to: Head of Product (The Times)

Your Team: The Times Media Product Management team is organised around three core pillars of the Times product: Customer (subscription growth), Content (reader experience), and Monetisation (commercial advertising).

You will be leading the Monetisation pillar (the ‘tribe’), which is made up of cross-functional squads of Product, Design, and Business Analysis, supported by a dedicated Delivery and Engineering team.

The Principal Product Manager for Monetisation will be responsible for driving growth and value across The Times’ commercial ecosystem, focusing on three key areas (‘squads’):

1. Diversification: with a mission to incubate and accelerate new commercial opportunities for Times Media.
2. Ad Experience: with a Mission to deliver best in class ad tech performance and innovative ad experiences for Times Media.
3. Travel: with a mission to craft path-to-purchase solutions for our new Times Holidays commercial venture.

This role sits at the intersection of product, design, engineering, and commercial, ensuring we build solutions that deliver measurable business impact while improving customer experiences across our websites and apps.

Day to day you will:

• Set the vision and strategy for monetisation products, aligning with the Commercial Director, Product Managers, and wider Product team.
• Define and deliver commercial roadmaps, balancing short-term revenue goals with long-term sustainability.
• Articulate and prioritise the tribe vision and roadmap to maximise impact across key areas like Diversification, Experience, and Travel.
• Collaborate with Monetisation squads, Travel Product Manager, Product tribes, Design, Business Analysts, Ad-Tech, and engineering teams to align strategies and deliver user-centric, revenue-driven solutions.
• Champion experimentation through A/B testing, prototyping, and customer insights to validate monetisation strategies.
• Influence and align stakeholders across leadership, editorial, commercial, and engineering teams for seamless integration of monetisation initiatives.
• Mentor and support Product Managers to optimise processes and achieve success.
• Agree shared OKRs with business teams and proactively report progress and outcomes to stakeholders.
• Promote best practices in product development and foster alignment across Principal Product Managers.
• Support the Head of Product in advancing Product Organisation Maturity and contribute to the News UK Product community.

What we are looking for from you:

• Strong experience in a commercial advertising focussed Product role, with strong Ad Tech understanding.
• Ability to work with and influence others to sell your vision and the product journey.
• Proactiveness rather than reactiveness in identifying and tackling opportunities.
• An experimental approach, focused on validating or invalidating assumptions to drive incremental impact.
• Ability to define solutions with the support of teams, balancing roadmap priorities, delivery timeframes, and presenting well-defined business cases.
• Strong decision-making, with the ability to justify priorities in collaboration with the Product team and wider stakeholders.
• Experience working with Engineering to balance shared, common technology with the specific needs of the business.
• A startup mindset, with the ability to be ‘T-shaped’ and find pragmatic ways to get things done.
• An eye for spotting marketing opportunities and a keen interest in industry developments.

News UK is one of the leading media businesses in the UK and Ireland. Our newsbrands include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun, The Sun on Sunday and The TLS. Our national broadcast brands include talkSPORT, Times Radio and Virgin Radio UK, and we have market-leading local stations across Ireland. Our world-famous brands provide news, analysis, opinion and entertainment to almost 40 million people each month. Spanning print and pixel, audio and video, events and experiences, our multi-format brands are home to a plurality of opinion, representing the diverse communities we serve. Driven by passion, guided by principles and acting with purpose, we exist to promote a fair society, freedom of speech and a little bit of fun. Rethinking continually the business of storytelling, we represent, reflect and reach the nation, telling the stories that matter.

At News UK, we know the value of working together, which is why we operate a hybrid working policy with a minimum of three days a week in the office. Being in the office allows us to collaborate, innovate, and thrive as a team in our vibrant and dynamic workspace. Some roles may require more office-based days depending on the nature of the position, so we encourage you to speak with your recruiter to learn more about what’s required for your role.

Life at News

Driven by passion, guided by principles and acting with purpose. We represent, reflect and reach the nation, telling the stories that matter. We inform our audiences so that they can make decisions based on trusted information.

We represent, reflect and reach the nation, telling the stories that matter most. To ensure these stories resonate with as broad an audience as possible, it is essential that our organisation reflects the diversity of the people we reach. Whether through age, gender, ethnicity, disability, social class or sexuality, we are committed to representing the rich variety of voices that make up our society. And we champion a culture where everyone has the opportunity to contribute and thrive as we continue to innovate and drive long term sustainable growth. This is done through our Diversity Strategy.

At News UK, we take pride in our exceptional employee-led networks that bring together individuals with shared interests and create a vibrant sense of community. We believe our networks play a vital role in fostering a collaborative and supportive work culture at News UK. Groups that we support include the African & Caribbean Network, Parents and Carers, and LGBTQ+ group News Is Out, and the Apprentice Society.

Benefits

Some of our benefits include:

• Private medical insurance including coverage for pre-existing conditions
• Discounted gym memberships, free ClassPass at Home, weekly in person/ virtual exercise classes
• ‘Bikes for Work’ and ‘Electric Car’ scheme
• Up to 60% discount on Harper Collins books
• Maternity leave up to 18 weeks full basic salary & paternity leave up to 2 weeks
• Access to exclusive events and competitions with exciting brands such as talkSPORT, Virgin Radio UK & The Times. Weekly virtual panel chats with top journalists and celebrities
• Access to wellbeing benefits such as EAP, physio/massage and counselling
• A generous pension scheme with employer contributions of up to 5%
• Wide range of training available, plus full LinkedIn Learning access
• 25 days holiday, plus bank holidays and up to 4 volunteering days per year

We want to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to perform to their best when applying for a role. If you would like to receive any information in a different way or for us to do anything differently to support you to apply for any of our roles please contact us on [email protected].