Head of Audience

The Times and The Sunday Times represent a combined 400 years of covering news and providing comment and analysis on the UK and the world. We are authoritative, credible, responsible, trusted and a part of the nation’s cultural heritage.

Your role: The Head of Audience is responsible for setting and delivering the audience strategy for The Times and Sunday Times newsroom. This role sits at the intersection of editorial, data, and growth — translating audience insight into action that helps our journalism reach and retain readers in the UK and globally. You will lead a cross-functional team spanning SEO, social media, newsletters, and community. You will be the voice of the audience in the newsroom: present at daily news conferences, trusted by editors and reporters, and instrumental in shaping how our stories find their readers. This is a senior leadership role that requires equal comfort with data and people — someone who can move between a granular analytics deep-dive and a news conference briefing comfortably.

Day to day you will:

• Define and execute the audience strategy for The Times and Sunday Times, with a focus on growing and engaging subscribers.
• Lead and develop a team of approximately 40 people across SEO, social, newsletters, community, and audience operations.
• Directly manage five senior leaders: Head of SEO, Head of Social, Head of Newsletters, Head of Community, and Deputy Head of Audience.
• Interpret complex audience datasets and distil them into clear, actionable insight for editorial and commercial stakeholders.
• Represent audience performance and priorities at daily news conferences, shaping editorial decisions with data.
• Partner closely with consumer marketing and commercial teams to align audience growth with broader business objectives.
• Champion a culture of experimentation and continuous improvement across all audience channels.
• Support the professional growth and development of your team, building capability and succession depth.

What we’re looking for from you:

• You are confident speaking to new people every day — whether that means translating a data trend for a reporter on deadline or briefing the senior leadership team on quarterly performance.
• You have extensive knowledge and experience across key audience disciplines including newsletters, social media, audience data, and SEO.
• You know what good looks like because you’ve done the work.
• You have worked in a strategic role at a subscription or membership publisher and understand the dynamics of reader revenue.
• You have a natural curiosity and a willingness to question the way things are done in pursuit of better outcomes for our journalism.
• You measure success by the impact your work has on the journalism we produce and the audiences we serve.
• You can manage competing priorities across a large team and multiple stakeholders without dropping the thread.
• You are comfortable in ambiguity. As newsrooms and audience behaviours evolve quickly, you need to lead and communicate with confidence as strategies change.

We are News UK: One of the leading media businesses in the UK and Ireland. Our newsbrands include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun, The Sun on Sunday and The TLS. Our national broadcast brands include talkSPORT, Times Radio, Talk and Virgin Radio UK, and we have market‑leading local radio stations across Ireland. Our world‑famous brands provide news, analysis, opinion and entertainment to almost 40 million people each month. Spanning print and pixel, audio and video, events and experiences, our multiplatform brands are home to a plurality of opinion, representing the diverse communities we serve. News UK is wholly owned by News Corp.

Life at News Driven by passion, guided by principles and acting with purpose. We represent, reflect and reach the nation, telling the stories that matter. We inform our audiences so that they can make decisions based on trusted information. To do this, we believe our employees must represent different backgrounds, perspectives and experiences. We strive to maximise and encourage every individual’s potential and ensure everyone feels valued. We support this through our Diversity Strategy, which focuses on three main priorities - attracting talent from a wider, more representative pool, developing equity programmes to drive better representation in our leadership, and ensuring diversity in our workforce as well as the journalism and content we produce. We also currently have 13 employee led networks and groups that support our strategy and connect like minded employees socially.

Some of our benefits include:

• Maternity leave up to 18 weeks full basic salary & paternity leave up to 2 weeks.
• Wide range of training available, plus full LinkedIn Learning access.
• Private medical insurance including coverage for pre‑existing conditions.
• Discounted gym memberships, free ClassPass at Home, weekly virtual yoga classes.
• ‘Bikes for Work’ and ‘Electric Car’ scheme.
• Up to 60% discount on Harper Collins books.
• Access to exclusive events and competitions with exciting brands such as talkSPORT, Virgin Radio UK & The Times.
• Weekly virtual panel chats with top journalists and celebrities.
• Access to wellbeing benefits such as EAP, physio/massage and counselling.
• A generous pension scheme with employer contributions of up to 5%.
• 30 days holiday, plus bank holidays and up to 4 volunteering days per year.