Director of Product, Games Experience

About company: We build the websites , apps, newsletters, and other products that power the digital offerings of a major national brand and hundreds of local news brands across the country. We've been a distributed team since before it was cool, with a hybrid culture shaped by a combination of fully remote teammates and those working from local offices across the countr y . Our geographic diversity puts us closer to our audiences, helping us keep them at the center of our work. And because many of us live in communities served by journalism, we take extra pride in helping it succeed .

What You'll Do: Our USA Today Crossword s e xperience has a highly engaged following and broad audience reach with its challenging and inclusive daily crosswords and other puzzles . We are looking for a se asoned product manage ment professional to grow our rapidly expanding portfolio. You will add new capabilities and features to optimize the playing experience on existing games and will develop new puzzles and games to delight our current players and attract new ones.

You'll partner with leaders across the organization, including Marketing, Data Intelligence, Engineering, and UX to build and execute an ambitious roadmap centered on exponentially growing our portfolio and audience.

The ideal candidate will be passionate not just about games but about creating great product experiences that deliver impact to business and audience goals. He/she will have a bias toward action, taking on new opportunities and tough challenges with a sense of urgency, high energy, and enthusiasm.

The ideal candidate will be as passionate about crafting great product s as they are about setting a new high score.

Responsibilities include :

• Build and execute a product roadmap for a best-in-class games portfolio covering the USA Today Crossword and other puzzles and games.

• Develop exclusive capabilities, features and games for our registered players and subscribers

• Translate business and content criteria and objectives into clearly defined requirements that populate a robust roadmap and articulate a product strategy.

• Analyze performance metrics, measure success and use this data to identify new product opportunities that will build habit-forming engagement among users to play more frequently and subscribe to premium experiences .

• Have experience identifying product -market fit and be able to develop plans to best optimize experience to target audiences.

• Create intuitive and fun experiences for puzzles and games through continuous experimentation and iteration.

• Prioritize the product roadmap based on optimization opportunities, and input from key partners.

• Partner with the engineering and design teams to define user stories, acceptance criteria, prioritize and conduct user acceptance testing.

Qualifications:

• 5-10+ years of product management experience and/ or related experience in the online gam ing industry

• Bachelor's degree. MBA and/or advanced degree preferred.

• Deep experience with agile software development methodology .

• Firm understanding of relevant web design and development technologies to translate business requirements to engineering teams.

• Ability to think critically and constructively about complex business problems, clearly communicate analysis, and present solutions that address business needs.

• Experience using data and metrics to independently test theories, confirm assumptions, and measure success with attention to detail.

• Curious and open-minded, with a knack for synthesizing and prioritizing customer and stakeholder requests.

• Detail-oriented with excellent organization, analytical, and problem-solving skills.

• Decisive with a bias towards action.

• A highly motivated self-starter who can work effectively across cross-functional teams and also make things happen on your own.

• A strong communicator with excellent written and verbal skills.

• A team player and fun to work with. Loves to share inspiration and new ideas with your direct and indirect teams.

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The annualized base salary for this role will range between $150,000 and $165,000. Base compensation is reflective of many factors, including, but not limited to, the market in which one lives/works, individual education level, skills, certifications and experience. Note: variable compensation is not reflected in these figures and based on the role, may be applicable.

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