Lead Product Manager (Remote)

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, newsroom staff, marketers, and analysts to execute seamlessly on behalf of the business and our users. 

As a Lead Product Manager, Consumer, you will lend your domain and functional expertise to build compelling experiences that sports fans love and propel the business forward. You will tackle complex initiatives that require cross-functional strategic, operational, and technical alignment to help make The Athletic an indispensable daily destination for sports fans. This is an advanced individual contributor role, and you will be critical to the success of the Product organization. You will report to the Director of Product, Consumer.

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

Focus of The Role

Your primary focus is to deliver impactful consumer-facing features and experiences across The Athletic's digital platforms (Web, iOS, and Android) that drive fan engagement and retention

Key areas of focus include:

- Creating compelling user experiences that showcase our premium sports journalism

- Developing features that deepen user engagement with our content (articles, newsletters, highlights, podcasts, and more)

- Building personalized experiences that connect fans with the teams and leagues they're passionate about

- Enhancing discovery features to help users find relevant content across our platforms

To succeed, you will need to:

- Understand sports fans' behaviors, needs, and motivations through both qualitative and quantitative insights

- Partner with newsroom leaders to translate editorial strategy into product experiences

- Work closely with engineers and designers to deliver high-quality features that drive our key metrics

- Balance short-term wins with longer-term strategic initiatives

- Make data-driven decisions that improve our audience engagement metrics

This role requires a passion for sports and an understanding of what makes fans tick, combined with strong product leadership skills to deliver features that users love across web and mobile platforms

Responsibilities

Own the strategy and roadmap for priority consumer experiences

- Define the strategy for your product area(s) to meet business objectives

- Operate as an internal advocate for the fan by bringing a deep understanding of sports fans' needs and behaviors to inform product decisions

- Work closely with the rest of the Product team to align initiatives and dependencies, so that we create a cohesive global product experience

- Develop and manage a roadmap that balances immediate user needs with longer-term strategic goals in the service of a cohesive experience across all touchpoints in the fan’s journey

- Articulate the "why" behind product strategy to gain and maintain alignment across stakeholders

Drive impact

- Champion features that drive our north star metrics 

- Build and lead cross-functional teams that ship with quality and velocity

- Create a culture of experimentation and continuous improvement

- Transform user feedback and data insights into product enhancements

- Foster a highly collaborative cross-functional environment focused on shared metrics and objectives 

Improve organizational operations

- Work closely with other leaders to improve collaboration and execution velocity

- Help establish best practices for product development and experimentation

- Navigate complex stakeholder environments with diplomacy and clarity of purpose

- Invest smartly in platforms that will allow us to experiment at scale - thinking through complex systems and building products that unlock outsize impact on the business

- Begin informing the work of other teams through direct and indirect mechanisms, including mentoring PM colleagues as appropriate

Requirements

- 4+ years of highly relevant product management experience at a fast-growing consumer company (sports/media is a plus), or demonstrated success in a similar role

- Strong strategic thinking with the ability to translate business goals into product features

- Expertise in consumer digital products

- High familiarity with and love for sports and journalism

- A bias toward action and the ability to rally teams to deliver results - you need to get things done

- Excellent collaboration skills and ability to influence without authority

- Excellence with data - analyzing data, deriving insights, and making data-driven decisions

- Empathy for users that translates into intuitive, delightful experiences

- Eagerness to try new things and learn - and a willingness to fail

- Experience working with and coordinating a diverse set of stakeholders

The annual base salary range for this role is $145,000.00 - $175,000.00 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 careers@theathletic.com 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 people@theathletic.com.