Programme Manager B2C London - Commercial

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The Economist's B2C business is how most readers meet us: written content, podcasts, narrated articles, video, all on and off-platform.

Building premium experiences for The Economist’s premium offering is what excites us.

Changing any of that means moving product, engineering, marketing, editorial and commercial at the same time - which makes these the largest and most visible programmes The Economist B2C business runs.

The role

We are hiring a Programme Manager to own these programmes end to end.

This is not a coordination role: you will hold the plan, chair the governance, hunt the dependencies before they bite, and tell senior people the truth early when something slips.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end delivery of B2C's most important programmes, across product, engineering, marketing and editorial.

This is not a coordination role: you are accountable for ensuring what's required to deliver business value ships on time, on budget and within scope.

You will work with a single accountable Business Sponsor, Engineering Lead and Product Lead (or combination of these) for every programme.

• Get deep enough into the business case, the technical solution and the contributing teams to lead the programme directly rather than report on it.
• Break the programme into named workstreams with named owners, and hold the integrated plan, critical path and dependency map across them.
• Hunt dependencies before they bite, scheduling fragile work such as end-to-end testing, migrations and design review with realistic lead time.
• Maintain a single source of truth per workstream: programme decisions, risks, and a plan people trust more than their own notes.
• Commit only what is understood.

Dates and scope do not go to stakeholders while the uncertainty behind them is still open.

A date offered to relieve pressure in the room is a date that will be wrong in reality.

• Chair the programme's governance (Team of Teams, Business Design Authority, stakeholder syncs and Go/No Go) and own the flash report, the decision log and the escalation path.
• Communicate openly and early, including where there is bad news, setting out impact, cause and the proposed response.
• Make operational readiness part of done, ensuring support teams have runbooks and understand expected behaviour before launch.
• Resolve cross-pillar resourcing and sequencing conflicts, and hold third parties to the same standard as your own teams.
• Put in place the means to track benefit realisation after launch, and close the programme with a retrospective that produces preventive actions.

Who you are

• Experience leading large, multi-team programmes to a public launch date, where product, engineering, marketing and commercial had to deliver together, rather than workstreams or projects inside a single squad.
• Technically literate: able to follow an architecture discussion, test an estimate and ask informed questions of engineering teams.
• Commercial judgement: comfortable partnering and questioning the business case, assessing what a programme is worth and what would need to be true for that value to hold.
• Comfortable holding accountability for delivery across team boundaries, including where a programme is at risk.
• Confident working with senior stakeholders, able to make the case for unwelcome decisions such as a change of scope or date, and reach a decision.
• You apply AI to your own work. Expect to be asked what you have automated in your own practice and what you have learned recently.

Also useful

• Experience in consumer subscription businesses: pricing, entitlements, paywalls, transactional journeys and app-store release cycles.
• Fluency in Jira, Jira Advanced Roadmaps and Confluence.
• Experience managing third-party and vendor delivery within a larger programme.
• Experience in media or publishing.
• #LI-Hybrid
• Working Arrangements

The majority of our roles operate on a hybrid working pattern, with 3+ days office attendance required.

AI usage for your application

We are an innovative organisation that encourages the use of technology.

We recognise that candidates may utilise AI tools to support with their job application process.

However, it is essential that all information you provide truthfully and accurately reflects your own experience, skills, and qualifications.

What we offer

Our benefits package is designed to support your wellbeing, growth, and work-life balance.

It includes a highly competitive pension or 401(k) plan, private health insurance, and 24/7 access to counselling and wellbeing resources through our Employee Assistance Program.

We also offer a range of lifestyle benefits, including our Work From Anywhere program, which allows you to work from any location where you have the legal right to do so for up to 25 days per year.

In addition, we provide generous annual and parental leave, as well as dedicated days off for volunteering and even for moving home.

You will also be given free access to all The Economist content, including an online subscription, our range of apps, podcasts and more.

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