Director, News Product and Operations

Job Description

We're looking for a Director of Product will help power that work by leading the product portfolio for the systems our teams use to plan, assign, produce, coordinate, collaborate, communicate, and move content from idea to execution. This role sits at the center of editorial ambition, production complexity, operational reality, and technology modernization. You'll own these tools for our news organizations - MS NOW and CNBC - as well as the other content creators around our company in Entertainment and Sports.

This is a leadership role for someone with a demonstrated history of product expertise. We are looking for a proven product leader who has owned complex portfolios, led teams, managed budgets, delivered against timelines, and helped large organizations modernize the tools and workflows that people depend on every day.

The right candidate understands that content creation is not one workflow. It is a thousand overlapping processes, shaped by deadline pressure, brand identity, live moments, breaking news, production realities, digital platforms, legacy systems, vendor constraints, executive priorities, and the very human need for tools that make work clearer instead of harder. This person should be able to talk credibly with journalists, producers, editors, show teams, sports operators, entertainment teams, engineers, architects, vendors, finance partners, and executives — and translate that complexity into product strategy, delivery plans, and measurable outcomes.

Working within the Operations & Technology organization, this leader will help modernize Versant’s full portfolio of content creation tools across news, sports, entertainment, lifestyle, digital, and cross-brand teams. That includes newsroom computer systems, editorial planning tools, assignment workflows, production coordination platforms, collaboration systems, communication tools, resource planning capabilities, and the enterprise platforms that help teams make content more effectively.

This role is for someone who can help teams create better work — not by admiring the complexity from a safe distance, but by getting close to the workflow, understanding what is broken, setting a clear product direction, making smart trade-offs, and leading a team that can deliver. The work will require modernization, consolidation, AI-enabled tooling, automation, stronger governance, better adoption, sharper reporting, more disciplined execution, and a practical understanding of how media teams actually operate.

What You’ll Do

• Own the vision, strategy, and roadmap for the tools Versant teams use to plan, assign, produce, coordinate, collaborate, communicate, and move content from idea to execution.
• Lead the modernization of content creation tools across news, sports, entertainment, lifestyle, digital, and cross-brand teams, with a strong focus on newsroom computer systems, production workflows, and the platforms people depend on every day.
• Get close to the work. Partner with journalists, producers, editors, show teams, planning teams, assignment desks, sports operators, entertainment teams, digital teams, and operations leaders to understand how content actually gets made.
• Turn complex workflows into clear product decisions, including where to simplify, where to standardize, where to preserve brand-specific needs, and where technology can reduce friction.
• Deliver committed roadmap initiatives according to agreed timelines, with clear scope, sequencing, resourcing, risk management, release planning, adoption planning, and post-launch measurement.
• Manage portfolio budgets across development, licensing, hosting, support, vendor services, and related operational costs. Use financial, operational, adoption, and reliability data to guide prioritization and investment decisions.
• Evaluate vendor platforms, enterprise tools, AI capabilities, and automation opportunities with practical judgment, applying them where they solve real problems and improve how teams work.
• Partner closely with engineering, architecture, operations, finance, support, and business stakeholders to ensure product decisions are scalable, secure, supportable, and aligned with Versant’s broader technology strategy.
• Lead, manage, mentor, and develop a team of product managers and related product partners. Set clear expectations for product strategy, discovery, stakeholder management, roadmap discipline, delivery accountability, and operational follow-through.
• Build a product function grounded in clarity, accountability, collaboration, user empathy, measurable outcomes, and credibility with the people who use these tools every day.
• Establish the governance, documentation, training, communications, support models, and success metrics needed for tools to scale across teams and continue improving after launch.

Qualifications

What You Bring

• 8+ years of product management, product strategy, media technology, newsroom technology, production technology, operations technology, or equivalent experience in news, entertainment, sports, broadcast, streaming, digital media, or a similarly complex operational environment.
• A demonstrated history of product leadership, including ownership of complex product portfolios, multi-year roadmaps, modernization initiatives, and measurable business outcomes.
• Proven experience leading product teams, including product managers and/or senior individual contributors.
• Strong working knowledge of newsroom computer systems, editorial planning tools, assignment workflows, production coordination platforms, collaboration tools, and content creation workflows.
• Experience leading product initiatives across multiple brands, divisions, platforms, or large distributed user groups.
• Proven ability to manage complex integrations, migrations, and modernization efforts across legacy and emerging systems.
• Strong delivery discipline, including experience managing committed timelines, roadmap dependencies, release plans, risks, trade-offs, and executive-level communications.
• Experience managing product budgets, vendor costs, licensing decisions, investment trade-offs, and ROI analysis.
• Strong Agile product experience, including roadmap development, backlog management, sprint planning, user story writing, prioritization, iterative delivery, release planning, and post-launch measurement.
• Experience partnering with engineering, design, analytics, operations, finance, cyber, privacy, support, editorial, production, and executive stakeholders.
• Strong user research instincts, with experience conducting stakeholder interviews, workflow analysis, prototyping, testing, feedback sessions, and adoption measurement.
• Excellent communication and influence skills, with the ability to translate complexity into clear decisions for technical, operational, editorial, and executive audiences.
• Demonstrated ability to modernize legacy systems, simplify fragmented workflows, and drive adoption of new platforms in complex organizations.
• Comfort making decisions with imperfect information, competing priorities, and real delivery consequences.

Desired Characteristics

• A proven product operator with strong judgment, delivery discipline, and the ability to lead through ambiguity.
• Deep empathy for the people who make content under pressure, including journalists, producers, editors, planners, show teams, digital teams, sports teams, entertainment teams, and operations partners.
• Strong technical fluency, with the ability to engage credibly with engineering and architecture teams while staying grounded in user needs and business outcomes.
• Practical curiosity about AI, automation, and emerging tools, with the judgment to apply them where they make work better instead of simply making the roadmap sound more modern.
• Executive presence and the ability to communicate clearly about strategy, priorities, investment decisions, timeline risks, delivery status, and business impact.
• A bias toward simplification, standardization, reliability, and adoption.
• The ability to manage multiple high-priority initiatives without losing accountability for details, deadlines, or outcomes.
• A collaborative leadership style that builds trust across matrixed teams with different incentives, vocabularies, and pressures.
• The patience to understand why a workflow exists, the discipline to decide whether it should continue, and the credibility to help teams move to something better.
• A respect for media, for the people who make it, and for the tools that either help them do ambitious work or quietly get in their way.

Location & Work Style

• This role is based in New York City.
• This is a hybrid role, with a minimum of three days per week in one of Versant’s offices, depending on business needs.
• Limited travel, less than 10%, to broadcast, vendor, or operations centers as required.

Additional Information

As part of our selection process, external candidates may be required to attend an in-person interview with a VERSANT Media employee at one of our locations prior to a hiring decision. VERSANT Media's policy is to provide equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, gender identity or expression, age, national origin or ancestry, citizenship, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, veteran status, membership in the uniformed services, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law.

If you are a qualified individual with a disability or a disabled veteran and require support throughout the application and/or recruitment process as a result of your disability, you have the right to request a reasonable accommodation. You can submit your request to [email protected].

VERSANT Media is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. We include a good faith pay range for each position to comply with applicable state and local pay transparency laws and to promote equity across our organization. Actual compensation will be based on factors such as the candidate's skills, qualifications, experience, and location and may include additional forms of compensation and benefits such as health insurance, retirement plans, paid time off, etc.

VERSANT Media is not accepting unsolicited assistance from search firms for this employment opportunity. All resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at VERSANT via-email, the Internet, or in any form and/or method without a valid written Statement of Work in place for this position from VERSANT's Talent Acquisition team will be deemed the sole property of VERSANT. No fee will be paid in the event the candidate is hired by VERSANT as a result of the referral or through other means.