Manager, Product Operations

Hearst•New York, NY

3h•$100,000 - $130,000

About The Position

The Manager, Product Operations works across Hearst Newspapers teams to drive alignment, improve execution, and establish operational foundations that support better outcomes. The role spans program leadership, workflow design, planning operations, tooling, team enablement, and organizational effectiveness. It partners with stakeholders across product, engineering, design, newsrooms, advertising, finance, and marketing to move complex initiatives forward with clarity and momentum. The manager also identifies opportunities to use AI, automation, and emerging technologies to improve collaboration, execution, and team effectiveness. Product Operations turns strategy into execution by helping teams collaborate, plan, execute, and adapt more effectively. The function builds scalable systems, reduces operational friction, and integrates technology thoughtfully. The role is hands-on and adaptive, requiring someone comfortable navigating ambiguity, solving operational challenges, and improving teams, processes, and systems. The position drives cross-functional initiatives, owns planning cadences and operational systems, improves visibility into capacity and delivery outcomes, and supports practical adoption of AI and automation. It serves as a strategic owner and administrator of collaboration and productivity platforms, while supporting onboarding, documentation, transparency, knowledge sharing, and an inclusive, high-trust team environment.

Requirements

Experience in Product Operations, Program Management, or Product Management in a technology or digital product environment.
Strong understanding of Agile product development practices and organizational operations.
Experience designing scalable workflows, operational systems, and process improvements.
Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional initiatives and influence without direct authority.
Strong analytical skills and comfort using operational metrics and reporting to guide decisions.
Experience driving organizational change management and adoption initiatives.
Experience designing and implementing AI-assisted workflows, automation solutions, and operational systems that improve team effectiveness, reduce manual overhead, and deliver measurable business value.
Advanced Airtable experience, including designing scalable workflows, relational data structures, automations, and interfaces for cross-functional operations.
Ability to build systems that are powerful without unnecessary complexity, balancing flexibility, usability, and long-term maintainability.
Experience using AI and automation tools to improve workflows, accelerate execution, and simplify operational processes.
Highly organized and detail-oriented, with the ability to manage multiple complex initiatives simultaneously.
Strong facilitation, communication, stakeholder alignment, and relationship-building skills.
Proactive, resourceful, comfortable working with ambiguity, and able to create structure and iterate quickly.
Focus on measurable impact and understanding of how operational improvements affect team effectiveness, product outcomes, and business results.
Follows through on commitments, communicates challenges openly, and consistently improves systems, documentation, and teams.

Nice To Haves

Experience with Jira, Confluence, Miro, and Figma.
Experience with Google Workspace and Microsoft 365.
Experience with Looker, Power BI, Google Analytics, spreadsheet modeling, operational reporting, and data analysis.
Familiarity with AI and automation tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Cursor, Zapier, Make, Power Automate, and Lovable.

Responsibilities

Drive execution of high-priority, cross-functional initiatives aligned with organizational goals and measurable business outcomes.
Coordinate across teams to reduce dependencies, improve alignment, and increase execution clarity.
Support leadership in operationalizing strategic priorities across the product organization.
Facilitate workshops, planning sessions, retrospectives, and operational reviews that drive alignment and accountability.
Own and evolve planning cadences, including quarterly roadmapping, intake processes, prioritization frameworks, and operational governance.
Build scalable workflows, operational systems, and documentation practices that improve consistency and visibility across teams.
Improve visibility into team capacity, delivery health, risks, and outcomes through dashboards, reporting, and operational metrics.
Help teams measure outcomes, not just output, across initiatives and workflows.
Identify opportunities to use AI, automation, integrations, and existing tools to improve team effectiveness, reduce operational overhead, and accelerate execution; assess whether proposed optimizations are worthwhile.
Continuously explore and optimize teams’ use of current platforms and workflows to increase value from the existing tool stack.
Experiment with tools and operational patterns for planning, communication, reporting, documentation, and knowledge sharing, prioritizing practical adoption, usability, and measurable impact.
Develop scalable systems, automations, templates, and playbooks that help teams integrate AI into product development responsibly and effectively.
Learn about and advocate for evolving ways of working, helping teams adapt as technology and organizational needs change.
Serve as a strategic owner and administrator for collaboration and productivity platforms, including Jira, Confluence, Airtable, Miro, and AI tooling ecosystems.
Build automations, templates, and workflows that improve operational efficiency and team collaboration.
Support onboarding, documentation quality, transparency, and knowledge sharing across teams.
Foster a healthy, inclusive, and high-trust team environment grounded in continuous improvement.
Drive successful adoption of new systems, processes, and ways of working across cross-functional teams.