Commercial Product Manager, Innovation

About Us

The Financial Times is one of the world’s leading news organisations, globally recognised for its authority, integrity and accuracy, with a mission to deliver quality information and services worldwide.

At the FT, curiosity thrives and ambitious thinking is rewarded. Here, you’re given the chance to reach millions, create work that matters and deliver impartial journalism in a polarised world.

In our warm, collaborative culture, you’ll connect with a diverse community of experts who support your growth, career aspirations and wellbeing.

Your future at the FT will be filled with opportunities that challenge and inspire you. With no fixed path, you’ll discover new skills and forge a career that can take you anywhere.

Build a newsworthy career at the FT.

Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

We believe in the power of unique perspectives and want all voices in our organisation to be heard, respected and valued. A supportive workplace is one where employees feel they can be themselves and operate to their full potential. We are committed to removing barriers for everyone, with a focus on addressing those faced by underrepresented groups.

The Role

The FT’s award-winning digital platforms provide the gold standard in global business news and information. The FT’s innovative business model has made it one of the world’s most successful digital news operations, with over 1m paid subscribers. We believe in knowing our readers and advertisers and that is reflected in everything we do. This role is in the Advertising department and is responsible for ensuring our Commercial Products are focused on performance, integrated with relevant systems and automated wherever possible.

Purpose of the role

The Global Revenue Operations team forms part of the Commercial Department with a remit spanning commercial product development, management of ad tech, workflows and data and business intelligence.

The role sits within the Commercial Product team, specifically focussed on supporting the ‘Commercial Innovation Director’ on developing new products and identifying new revenue generating opportunities. As part of the wider Global Revenue Operations team, it is the Commercial Product team’s remit to support the development of new and innovative advertising products, tech integrations and vendor management, internal workflows and user targeting & segmentation. The team’s goal is to bring value to the business through improving the FT’s ability to deliver marketing objectives for advertising clients.

Reporting into the  Innovation Director, the Commercial Product Manager will be expected to lead the Commercial Product strategy for their dedicated workstreams. The candidate needs to be a guide in collaborator management, strategy setting and roadmap development, whilst understanding the technical requirements that underpin the digital advertising business. In addition, they will be expected to ensure that all of digital commercial development work is inline with business-wide strategy. Whilst the candidate won't have any direct sales targets, they will be expected to translate the revenue goals with product development efforts.

Main Duties and Responsibilities

At a more tactical level, the candidate will:

• Define and deliver a robust product strategy for projects. Ensuring there is a clear business need and ties into FT’s key strategic pillars. 

• Translate the FY strategy into quarterly roadmaps that are ambitious, achievable, and are directly linked to the Commercial Product strategic pillars. 

• Lead the delivery and implementation of the agreed roadmap.

• Responsible for collaborator management, including translating commercial ideas and considerations to the other teams, gathering sales requirements, and sharing relevant updates regularly.

• Connect project accomplishments and goals to broader organizational outcomes and key achievements. As appropriate, seek to align both goals and achievements and roadmaps across teams.

• Implement testing methodologies for iterative development, working with the ‘test and learn’ approach. When releasing products, ensuring revenue and performance can be easily tracked.

• Create workflows that ensure new product innovations have the best opportunity to scale. Identifying problems that may cause a barrier to market and finding solutions to resolve them.

• Track test performance against critical metrics and ensure that any discrepancies with 3rd parties are flagged and resolved.

• Partner with appropriate teams to implement new products into the FT portfolio. Ensure that processes are fully understood and resolve friction points where feasible.

• Consider Sales as key team members in product development, ensuring that the client need and an understanding in demand is key in product decisions.

• Analysing trends and new ad-tech opportunities within the media landscape to ensure that the Financial Times are taking advantage of new opportunities.

• Work closely with the wider Commercial Product team, supporting projects which fall into the key pillars of the digital marketing strategy.

Desired skills

• 5+ years of experience in media and/or 3-4 years of experience in product management.

• Strong experience with data and analysis with the ability to discover insights relevant for business growth. Ideally literate in SQL

• Extensive knowledge of marketing and media industry metrics and systems, including digital media and web analytics (e.g. DFP, DCM, Web Analytics).

• Experience of working on automation projects with a good understanding of technical requirements.

• An active interest in the use-cases of AI and some experience of testing within this space.   

• A good understanding of computer science or data science principles would be useful for this role.

• Good interpersonal skills, with the ability to have technical and business conversations

• Ability to manage multiple projects, across several teams within multiple markets

• Excellent presentation, analysis and technical troubleshooting skills

• Proactive and always looking for ways to constantly improve performance

• Proven experience in developing and implementing a strategy

• Proven experience in end to end development of commercial products

• Proactive and always looking for ways to constantly improve advertising performance

• A good understanding of how to troubleshoot ad-tech components.

• A good knowledge of online marketing and brand marketing principles. 

• Ability to present analytical projects to a non-analytical audience.

• Excellent attention to detail and takes pride in high quality output.

What’s in it for You?

Our benefits vary by location but we are committed to providing best-in-class perks across all our offices. These include generous annual leave, medical cover, inclusive parental leave packages, subsidised gym memberships, and opportunities to give back to the community.

Full details of our benefits are available here.

We’ve embraced a 50% hybrid working model (averaging two to three days onsite) that fosters trust and remote adaptability while encouraging in-person camaraderie and peer learning. Additionally, we are open to accommodating specific flexible working pattern requests for all roles where feasible.

Accessibility

We are a disability confident employer and a Valuable 500 signatory.

Please let us know if you require any reasonable adjustments/personalisation as part of the application process or to enable you to attend an interview. If you would like to discuss your requirements or have any questions, email [email protected], and a member of our team will be happy to help.

Further Information

At the FT, we embrace innovation and the use of technology and appreciate that individuals may leverage AI tools as part of their job application process. Whilst we are happy for you to use AI to assist with your application, it is essential that all information provided is authentic and accurately represents your skills, experience, and qualifications.

Candidates should be aware that the use of AI throughout the application process may be monitored to ensure a fair and transparent hiring process for all.

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