Data Product Manager

This is an exciting time to join the Data & Insights team at The Economist Group. Under our newly appointed Chief Data Officer we are creating a center of excellence spanning research, analytics and data science partnering with the whole group, including our core subscription business, our Economist Intelligence Unit, Client Solutions and Events business.

Our purpose is to better understand and affect the drivers of our business through data analytics and research, with a focus on our users, B2C customers and B2B clients. We are value focused and outcome driven: we help drive growth and agility at every level, whether through informing strategic alignment and decisions, providing quick feedback loops to operators or creating machine learning models to be integrated into our products and marketing communications.

Reporting to the Head of Data Product Management, the Data Product Manager for B2B will guide the development of our data products to ensure they create maximum value for the business. They will write the user stories across The Economist B2B businesses:

• Economist Intelligence - our research service which provides the world’s top businesses, governments and academic institutions with social, political and financial information.
• Economist Impact - our advertising business which connects our clients and customers through digital media and live events.
• Economist Education - our newly founded executive education service which provides training courses.

They will define the acceptance criteria and prioritize the associated backlog related to relevant data products and services developed by our Data Platform & Products team, and help the Head of Data Product Management define goals and success criteria data for the development of internal data products and services. Data products and services in scope may include: data platform capabilities, data feeds, data marts, analyst tables, APIs, machine learning models, visualizations and self-serve data products. 

Key Interfaces:

• Data & Insights leadership, including Head of Research, Head of Analytics, Head of Data Science, Lead BI Analyst, as well as key team members focused on The Economist B2B businesses
• Data Technology team, especially architect and data platform engineering team
• Key primary data users across The Economist Group in and beyond the Data & Insights team
• Key stakeholders across Economist Intelligence, Economist Impact & Economist Education
• Product team under our Chief Product Officer

How you will contribute:

This position has a broad scope of responsibility, including to:

• Develop a deep understanding of existing data use cases and of key source datasets across Economist Intelligence, Economist Impact & Economist Education, including overall structure, identifiers, variables and dimensions available
• Work closely with key stakeholders and with technical teams to crystallize emerging use cases and assess business value vs. feasibility    
• Maintain, update and prioritize data product backlogs and create user story tickets. Prioritization criteria will be agreed with the Head of Data Product Management and key stakeholders. For technical work the data architect and data engineering team along with the technical business analyst will then define the technical solution and do the technical QA of that solution as part of the delivery process. For visualization, self-serve products, or modeling work, the BI or Insights teams will develop the solutions
• Provide input to the Head of Data Product Management regarding: the key objectives for the suite of data products we deliver, based on a deep understanding of business objectives and specific needs of key data users 
• Develop outcome focussed measures of success and acceptance criteria for each major initiative or new data product 
• Communicate roadmap, vision, achievements and progress to the wider team and to stakeholders
• Champion data literacy within the organization and drive adoption rates of key data capabilities
• Educate key users and stakeholders on potential platform capabilities, including emerging technologies and approaches
• Align with our Product team’s best practices, ways of working and product management processes, adapt them to the Data universe, and generally participate in and contribute to the Product Management community of practice at The Economist Group
• Continually build bridges to firm up fruitful collaborations with data users and stakeholders across the group

The ideal skills for this role are:

• Proven experience in product management of data capabilities, including internal data products as well as data models to be integrated in user-facing product features or marketing communications that drive business value
• Experience in using all forms of user insight, customer research and data analytics to develop products successfully
• Solid understanding of data technologies and data architecture, including modern big data and cloud technology, business intelligence toolkit, key analytics and machine learning systems that drive automation and optimisation, including model deployment technologies
• Highly collaborative, working comfortably within a complex matrix environment
• Dedicated team player with excellent communication skills
• Proven track record of having established successful business relationships, and influenced and engaged with senior stakeholders including at Executive level

Attributes required for the role:

• Proactive and results oriented
• Motivation to perform and succeed
• High-energy, robust and resilient
• Analytical and driven by insight and understanding
• Able to motivate, influence and empower others irrespective of reporting lines
• Collaborative, direct and open in approach
• Agile mentality - to develop a product management process fostering high-quality iterative delivery while we evolve towards a broader platform vision