Staff Technical Product Manager, The Athletic
$185-205k
Subscription-based sports content publisher
Be an early applicant
Subscription-based sports content publisher
501-1000 employees
Be an early applicant
$185-205k
501-1000 employees
Company mission
To produce smarter coverage for die-hard fans and redefine the way fans get access to sports content by flipping the normal model for sports journalism.
Role
Who you are
- 8+ years of highly relevant product management experience
- Clear domain expertise in your area(s) of focus - you are expected to hit the ground running and bring your knowledge and skills to create immediate impact
- Exceptional strategic thinking with the ability to translate business goals into product strategy and roadmap
- A bias to action and the ability to rally teams to deliver results
- Excellence with data - analyzing data, deriving insights, and making data-driven decisions
- Excellence with A/B testing as a tool to rigorously deliver impact
- Excellent collaboration skills and ability to influence a team and drive alignment with stakeholders
- Empathy for users that translates into intuitive, delightful experiences
- Eagerness to try new things and learn - and a willingness to fail
What the job involves
- Product plays a pivotal role at The Athletic, spearheading critical cross-functional initiatives and leading teams of engineers, designers, marketers, data scientists, and analysts to execute seamlessly on behalf of the business and our users
- As a Staff Product Manager, you will lend your domain and functional expertise to a wide range of business and Product areas that collectively require multidisciplinary skills
- You will tackle highly complex issues that require cross-functional strategic, operational, and technical alignment
- This is an advanced individual contributor role, and you will be critical to the success of the Product organization
- We have an exciting and ambitious strategy to attain tremendous growth in the next three years. To achieve this vision, we must dramatically improve - and in some cases overhaul - our technical infrastructure and capabilities
- We have an initial engineering and data strategy to achieve this, but it requires an exceptional Technical Product leader to drive the product strategy, roadmap, and execution of this work
- You will be the critical product linchpin to the success of our technical strategy, and will partner with senior leaders across the technology organization to achieve our goals
- This work spans Engineering and Data strategy and capabilities, inclusive of our publishing and content systems, games and sports data, personalization systems, and Generative AI - and covers our web, iOS, and Android platforms
- This is a Staff Technical Product Manager role, and requires exceptionally strong technical skills in order to best partner with Engineering and Data leadership, including two-way communication and translation of Business and Product strategy and impact into and out of the technical work
- Own a Cohesive Strategy and Roadmap Across a Portfolio of Product Areas
- Be a Leader of Your Domain and the Product Org at Large
- Independently define strategy for horizontal systems or experiences spanning multiple product areas
- Look 12–24 months ahead, planning across seasons and multi-year initiatives
- Articulate the "why" behind product strategy to gain and maintain alignment across stakeholders
- Prioritize platform-level solutions based on multi-team ROI
- Prioritize roadmap based on downstream impact across teams, not just local outcomes
- Inform the overall direction of our product beyond immediate ownership
- Be accountable for multiple teams’ north star and KPIs
- Build and lead cross-functional teams that ship with quality and velocity
- Unblock and accelerate multiple teams simultaneously
- Deliver durable solutions that reduce rework and future operational overhead
- Operate with minimal oversight; consistently avoid surprises
- Balance speed with long-term scalability and maintainability
- Own outcomes end-to-end, from conception through sustained impact
- Influence multiple teams and senior stakeholders without direct authority
- Independently navigate - and serve as a trusted thought partner - to technology and company leadership, to drive consensus on complex initiatives
- Proactively align teams around shared goals, definitions, and success metrics
- Foster a highly collaborative cross-functional environment focused on shared metrics and objectives
- Mentor PMs on strategy, tradeoffs, and long-term thinking
- Create reusable frameworks, tools, or processes adopted across teams; viewed as the “gold standard” for the PM org
- Own 1+ complex Product or Tech Org process or culture initiatives
Our take
The Athletic provides authentic, in-depth coverage written by journalists who know the teams they write about inside out. Its model bucks the trend of traditional sports journalism outfits by asking for a subscription rather than relying on ad-revenue.
Despite initial doubts that users would be willing to pay for sports journalistic content, The Athletic has found significant success and was acquired by the New York Times in 2022. Despite it operating at a loss directly after the takeover, it was clear that the New York Times perceived this as a long-term investment.
In 2025, it was reported that The Athletic was now profitable, which aligns well with its parent's prediction of profitability within 4 years. This has been aided by accelerated customer growth alongside the rising trend of subscription-based sports news.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Funding (last 2 of 7 rounds)
Jan 2020
$50m
SERIES D
May 2019
$21.8m
SERIES C
Total funding: $139.7m
Company benefits
- Paid Time Off
- Paid Sick Leave
- Paid Parental Leave
- 401 (k)
- Short & Long Term Disability
- Free Subscription
- Competitive Health Care
- HSA & FSA
- Commuter Benefits
Company HQ
Financial District, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Adam Hansmann
(President & Co-Founder)Previously a McKinsey Business Analyst and then Associate at Calera Capital.
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