Mobile Apps Product Manager

Summary:
MediaNews Group is seeking a visionary Product Manager to lead our Mobile Apps team, focusing on content product and distribution through our cutting-edge mobile platforms. This strategic role is centered on enhancing how we serve our primary customers: our network of newsrooms and their diverse audiences. As the steward of our digital publishing capabilities, you'll play a crucial role in shaping the tools and technologies that empower our newsrooms to deliver compelling content efficiently and effectively to readers across our IOS and Android platforms.
What you will do:

• Work with Product Directors to define product strategy including vision, objectives, and initiatives to get there within a 1-year rolling wave timeframe for all 100+ apps
• Create and execute the product roadmap, facilitating collaboration with internal stakeholders and other product managers to drive the anticipated value agreed to as part of the agile planning process
• Publish, update and troubleshoot work pulled from CMS to apps
• Design feature experiments in mobile apps and validate hypotheses through customer feedback and analytics
• Ensure the right work is brought into the team backlog, broken down, and prioritized or rejected
• Articulates functional details to developers based on customer requirements to align product strategy and definition to product delivery
• Communicates product delivery status and progress, frequently seeking feedback from stakeholders and customers
• Writes user stories, acceptance criteria and prioritizes the team backlog to articulate how a requirement would be implemented. Includes identification of customer use cases, edge cases, dependencies, and acceptance criteria including non-functional requirements
• Accept user stories and occasionally features as done
• Demonstrate technical product expertise from a functional perspective, as well as industry, technology, and vendor literacy and analysis (e.g. contributes to build vs buy decisions)
• Adhere to industry-accepted product owner agile principles, in line with internal processes
• Participate in Agile ceremonies e.g. daily scrum, sprint planning meetings, retros to contribute to the team tasks

What you will bring:

• At least 2-3 years of experience working as a product manager in an agile environment
• Proven track record in product management, with a strong emphasis on mobile app development, particularly in digital content distribution
• Expertise in Agile and Scrum project management methodologies, with the ability to adapt and thrive in a fast-paced news production environment
• Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills, capable of engaging effectively with technical teams and editorial staff
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Business, Computer Science, or a related field, ideally with an understanding of the digital media landscape
• 2-3 years working experience with App Store Connect, Google Play Publisher and Firebase
• Demonstrated expertise in developing cross-platform mobile applications using Java and Kotlin for Android and Swift for iOS
• Excited about data and data insights being a core driver of company efficiency and decision-making
• Able to constantly prioritize workload with minimal supervision and manage multiple priorities
• Strong interpersonal and interrelation skills with an ability to establish, build and maintain relationships with a variety of people across departments
• Servant-leader mindset in accordance with agile methodologies
• Outstanding communication skills, both written and spoken

The annual salary range is $100,000 - $115,000. Pay is based on several factors including but not limited to education, work experience, time in role, certifications, etc. In addition to your salary, MediaNews Group offers a comprehensive benefits package, and a 401K plan (all benefits are based on eligibility).
Who we are:
MediaNews Group is a leader in local news, committed to informing, inspiring and engaging readers with award-winning journalism in a diverse array of trusted publications that are integral parts of the communities they serve. MediaNews Group publishes 68 daily and more than 300 weekly publications throughout the United States, including the Denver Post, San Jose Mercury News, Orange County Register, St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Boston Herald. In print and online, our publications reach a combined audience of more than 60 million every month. We are proud of our long history of community service, providing essential news to our readers for more than 170 years. We believe that a free press is fundamental to a healthy democracy and we are committed to building a sustainable future for our journalism.
The Mobile Apps team's mission is to create people-centric digital technology that empower our local news and partners by putting people, product, and performance first. True to our purpose, we help small teams play big! We build product experiences not only for our local news publications across the entire digital portfolio, now including our affiliate company Tribune Publishing, but also for the Adtaxi digital marketing agency as well. As part of our team, you will contribute to a culture that prioritizes and rewards continuous learning, decentralized decision making, expertise, agility, and pragmatism. Join us to kick-start your career at a company and team that offer substantial personal and professional growth opportunities via a hands-on learning approach and a flexible working style, founded on scaled agile principles and autonomous agile teams. Learn more at www.medianewsgroup.com.
We are an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status.
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