Data Product Manager

Job Description

The Texas Tribune, the state’s go-to source for politics and public policy news, is hiring a Data Product Manager to transform our robust data resources into powerful, actionable business insights. You’ll work across every layer of the organization to ensure everyone benefits from data that’s clear, connected, and aligned with our mission.

This role is housed in the product department, reports to the Chief Product Officer, and collaborates closely with the Director of Audience Growth and Engagement. The Tribune’s product team is the bridge between editorial, audience and revenue. We create systems to guide our organization’s transformation as we launch and sustain local newsrooms to serve more Texans. This is not an editorial position, but you will work closely with journalists to improve news products.

The salary for this position starts at $80,000, depending on qualifications.

What you’ll do

You’ll operate on three critical levels:

1. Team collaboration: Work with the product team, audience team, and others to translate data into actionable insights and product recommendations. Partner with team leads across the organization to ensure major decisions are grounded in evidence, not guesswork.

2. Vision and infrastructure: Own, maintain, and iterate upon the core data infrastructure that powers how we track, measure, and understand newsroom and business activity. Collaborate with leadership on connecting daily operations to the Tribune’s big-picture vision, ensuring data tells the right story, and our overall direction stays on course. 

3. Company-wide Storytelling: Distill the torrent of metrics, trends, and discoveries into impactful presentations for staff alongside the audience director. Your work will help us see the big picture and align efforts on what truly drives our mission.

Example of a major project:

Build simple, intuitive dashboards for our new Waco and Austin newsrooms. These tools will track local growth and impact by delivering real-time insights and engagement in a clear interface.

About you

• You know what questions data and analytics can answer — and what it can’t. 

• You have experience building dashboards, defining success metrics and working cross-functionally. 

• You love finding clarity amid complexity and empowering others to do the same.

• You don’t just maintain dashboards, but constantly ask what we should measure next to further our mission. 

• You’ll shape the culture around data-driven decisions as we grow, including proposing and driving KPIs.

• You thrive on turning raw data into alignment, impact, and mission-driven action.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree and 2 + years of relevant experience OR equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.

• Experience working with newsroom, digital media, or audience engagement teams.

• Demonstrated ability to translate raw data into business, product and editorial recommendations.

• Experience designing dashboards and analytics tools for non-technical end users using BI tools such as Looker or Tableau.

• Familiarity with audience measurement and CRM tools, such as Google Analytics and Salesforce.

• Proven track record of cross-functional collaboration and project ownership.

• Strategic thinker with strong organizational and prioritization skills.

• Experience with SQL; knowledge of Python, R or other programming languages for data queries, pipelines, or modeling.

• Technical experience that is a plus, but not required includes integrating with third-party APIs and performing ETL work and knowledge of cloud services like BigQuery and dbt.

We know there are great candidates who won’t check all of these boxes, and we also know you might bring important skills that we haven’t thought of. If that’s you, don’t hesitate to apply and tell us about yourself.

Location

The Tribune is headquartered in Austin, and we have journalists in cities across the state. This position can be based anywhere in the U.S, but we prefer candidates who are familiar with Texans and their news needs.  

Benefits

This job is full-time and has the following benefits:

• Medical, vision and dental insurance

• Monthly cellphone stipend

• 20 days of paid time off each year

• 12 paid holidays

• Up to 16 weeks of paid family leave plus four weeks of additional job protection

• Annual 401(k) match

• Support for professional training and career development

• Remote working flexibility

How to Apply

Submit your application here by July 27, with a resume and examples of your work. Please submit a cover letter introducing yourself to us and describing why you want to work in product at the Tribune. Please describe your relevant product, data and analytics experience providing actionable insights to a newsroom or similar organization. 

The Texas Tribune is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We encourage applicants of all identities, backgrounds, ages, and abilities to apply. We can't wait to hear from you.

About The Texas Tribune

Here’s what you should know about the Tribune. From day one, we’ve had disruption, innovation and risk-taking in our DNA. We’re ambitious as all get out but still have the punch-above-your-weight mentality of a scrappy start-up. We believe we can meet the demands of our audience and our own expectations for excellence without breaking the bank — or our staff. We understand not everything is a story for us — we have to make choices — but we’re always looking to expand our boundaries. 

We’re nonprofit because the challenging economic reality for media these days obligates us to find a different way, reliable and sustainable, to fund serious journalism. We’re nonpartisan because we live in the United States of Confirmation Bias — and we don’t need to be part of the problem. We don’t need to be yet another source of information affirming the voices and perspectives that are already in people’s heads. At the same time, nonpartisan is not non-thinking. We call B.S. when B.S. needs to be called.

The Texas Tribune seeks to ensure that its newsroom and its news coverage reflect Texas by including a wide range of perspectives from people of different backgrounds, ideologies and experiences.

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