Hearst Television is looking for a Product Manager to help define the next generation of local news. You will own the day-to-day execution and optimization of our mobile and OTT app suite, ensuring that when news breaks, our users receive a high-performance, reliable, and immersive streaming experience.
Reporting to the Sr. Technical Product Lead, you will serve as a key bridge between technical feasibility and user experience. You thrive on the challenge of platform fragmentation—shipping a unified experience across everything from Android to Apple TV—and use behavioral analytics to drive engagement and retention for a truly binge-worthy product.
Responsibilities
- Lifecycle & Agile Execution: Own the end-to-end delivery of features. Act as the primary Product Owner for engineering and design teams, leading grooming, sprint planning, and retrospectives to ensure high-velocity, high-quality releases.
- Backlog & Requirement Engineering: Translate complex stakeholder needs and newsroom requirements into actionable user stories with clear technical acceptance criteria.
- Operational Excellence: Monitor critical streaming KPIs (crash rates, rebuffering, video starts) and QoE metrics. Lead "hotfix" prioritizations and triage platform-specific bugs during high-traffic breaking news or severe weather events.
- Platform Parity: Ensure a consistent "Hearst" experience across a fragmented device landscape, balancing feature parity between high-end mobile devices and lower-memory, resource-constrained OTT hardware.
- Data-Driven Optimization: Use A/B testing and behavioral data to refine the user funnel, focusing on converting "app downloads" into "Daily Active Users".
- Stakeholder Liaison: Partner with Digital Content and Sales/Ad-Ops to balance editorial urgency with technical feasibility and advertising impact.
Technical Competencies & Skills
- Mobile & OTT Ecosystems: Hands-on experience with submission and lifecycle management for the Apple App Store, Google Play, Roku Publishing, and Amazon Developer Console.
- Streaming & Ad-Tech: Foundational knowledge of HLS/DASH protocols and digital advertising standards (VAST/VMAP), including the nuances of Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI).
- Engagement Infrastructure: Understanding of notification payload architecture (Airship/Braze), including deep-linking and TTL settings for time-sensitive alerts.
- Modern Toolset: Proficiency in Jira/Confluence and analytics platforms (GA4, Conviva, Looker). Familiarity with AI-enhanced development tools (e.g., Cursor, FigmaAI) for rapid prototyping and documentation.
- Local Nuance: Understanding of geo-fencing and API-driven weather/data feeds (e.g., The Weather Company) and how they integrate into consumer interfaces.
Experience & Qualifications
- Experience: 3-5 years in Product Management, specifically within digital media, news, or streaming.
- Track Record: Proven success managing 2-3 full app-store release cycles from submission to post-launch optimization.
- Analytical Mindset: Proven ability to leverage data (GA4, Conviva, or A/B testing) to diagnose product friction, optimize the user funnel, and justify roadmap prioritization through quantitative storytelling.
- Education: Bachelor’s degree in Technology, Business, Design, or equivalent professional experience.
- Communication: Exceptional ability to draft technical documentation, executive briefs, and release notes for non-technical stakeholders.
- Adaptability: Ability to pivot priorities instantly based on the breaking news cycle or market shifts.
Compensation
The salary for this role is $95,000-$140,000. The actual base pay offered is dependent upon many factors, such as transferable skills, work experience, business needs, market demands and conditions, including geographic location where the work will be performed, and other factors permitted by law. The base pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future.
Values in Action
At Hearst Television we tell stories every day. Stories about people of all backgrounds, perspectives, and identities. That's why, behind the scenes, we believe in being an organization that fosters collaboration and open communication, ensuring that the content we create is authentic, accurate, and connected to the communities we serve.
Benefits
Hearst's benefits programs are modern, flexible and designed to focus on you. As a Hearst employee, you and your spouse or partner or dependents would have access to the following benefits.
- Medical | Dental | Vision
- 401(k) matching
- Emotional Wellness Support
- Paid Time Off
- Paid Parental Leave
- LGBTQ+ Health Services
- Additional benefits to meet your and your family's needs
We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. we do not discriminate in hiring on the basis of sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, creed, national, origin, physical or mental disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.
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