Product manager in privacy

The Financial Times is one of the world's leading business news organisations, recognised internationally for its authority, integrity and accuracy. Trust sits at the heart of the FT. That means not only producing journalism our readers can rely on, but also being thoughtful, transparent and responsible in how we design our products and use customer data. Our Product & Technology organisation plays a central role in helping the FT deliver on this ambition, building products and experiences that serve our customers while supporting the long-term growth of the business.

Responsibilities:

• Identifying opportunities to strengthen trust through clear, transparent and respectful privacy experiences.
• Making it easier for customers to understand and manage how their data is used.
• Creating simpler and more consistent experiences across customer journeys.
• Helping ensure that product teams use customer data in ways that are responsible, understandable and aligned with customer expectations.
• Working with teams across the FT to embed privacy thinking earlier in product and technology development.
• Developing a better understanding of how customers interact with privacy choices and how those experiences affect trust and engagement.
• Using customer research and responsible experimentation to improve how privacy choices are communicated and experienced.
• Working with Legal, Compliance and Data Governance colleagues to ensure that evolving requirements are translated into scalable and customer-friendly product solutions.
• Helping improve the systems, processes and ownership models that support privacy experiences across the FT, powering more personalised journeys.
• Defining and communicating a clear product vision, strategy and roadmap for the Privacy team.
• Identifying the most important customer and business problems to solve and translating them into measurable outcomes.
• Balancing customer trust, regulatory responsibilities, product experience, technical sustainability and business needs when setting priorities.
• Looking beyond individual requirements or projects to build capabilities that can support the FT over the long term.
• Making the customer perspective central to privacy product decisions.
• Working with Research, Design and Data teams to understand how customers perceive privacy, data use and consent.
• Identifying areas where experiences may be confusing, inconsistent or unnecessarily difficult.
• Advocating for simple language, meaningful choices and experiences that help customers feel informed and in control.
• Leading initiatives involving multiple product and technology teams and a wide range of business stakeholders.
• Working closely with Engineering and Architecture colleagues to understand technical opportunities, constraints and dependencies.
• Partnering with Legal, Compliance and Data Governance teams to translate specialist requirements into effective customer and product solutions.
• Building strong relationships across the FT and creating alignment where different teams have competing needs or priorities.
• Defining meaningful measures of success and using data and customer research to understand product performance.
• Developing hypotheses and experiments that help improve customer understanding and trust.
• Using external trends, industry developments and emerging best practice to inform product direction.
• Ensuring decisions are based on evidence while recognising the importance of judgement in areas involving trust and customer expectations.

Requirements:

• Significant experience managing digital products or platforms.
• A strong track record of defining product strategy and turning it into measurable outcomes.
• Experience leading complex initiatives across multiple teams and stakeholder groups.
• A strong customer focus and an ability to identify the underlying customer problem rather than simply respond to requirements.
• Excellent judgement when balancing customer, business, technical and regulatory considerations.
• Strong analytical skills and experience using data, customer research and experimentation to inform decisions.
• The ability to turn complex or ambiguous problems into clear priorities and actions.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including experience communicating with senior stakeholders.
• Experience working closely with engineers, designers, researchers, analysts and other specialist disciplines.
• An understanding of how product decisions contribute to both customer value and sustainable business outcomes.
• A collaborative leadership style and the ability to influence without direct authority.
• Most importantly, you will care deeply about creating products that customers can trust.

Desirable:

• Privacy, consent or customer preferences.
• Customer identity or first-party data.
• Personalisation or data-driven customer experiences.
• Data governance.
• Trust and safety.
• Regulatory or highly regulated product environments.
• Large-scale digital platforms or shared product capabilities.

Conditions:

We are looking for a Senior Product Manager, Privacy to lead this important product area on a fixed-term basis, covering maternity leave until the end of December 2027. 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. We currently operate a hybrid model which requires staff to work onsite 50% of the time, subject to role requirements & regular review. While flexible working requests will be considered, not all patterns are suitable for all roles.