Your New Role...As
Staff Product Manager, Underscored, you will own the end-to-end user journey for the next iteration of CNN Underscored. As part of CNN's New Business division, dedicated to expanding beyond traditional news, you will shape the future of digital shopping guidance.
We're seeking a product leader who deeply understands an audience's unique mindsets, shopping behaviors, and pain points, and can translate those insights into a cohesive, trusted product experience from purchase discovery through decision and beyond.
Your Role Accountabilities...- Own the Holistic Journey: Lead the end-to-end experience and user lifecycle of Underscored, ensuring every stage of the user journey feels seamless, intentional, and valuable.
- Obsess Over Customer Profiles & Needs: Deeply investigate user segments, shopping habits, and real-world alternatives. Conduct continuous qualitative and quantitative research to identify friction points and build solutions tailored to user mental models.
- Bridge Strategy & Execution: Partner closely with Design, UX Research, Engineering, and Editorial leads to translate core customer insights into clear product hypotheses, wireframes, and scalable solutions. Steer the team in strategic product areas with high complexity and ambiguity.
- Drive Business & User Outcomes: Define core performance metrics that balance business goals with genuine user utility, ensuring we build products people trust and return to repeatedly.
- Be Hands-On: Generate product briefs, user stories, and all documentation to drive alignment across the team. Help run team ceremonies to ensure progress stays on-track.
- Bring the Underscored Evolution to Market: Lead the execution of an MVP and evolve it iteratively based on user and business needs.
Qualifications & Experience...- 8+ years of consumer-facing product management experience, with experience leading complex and ambiguous customer problems, particularly in the shopping, commerce, decision-making or loyalty space.
- Demonstrated experience of taking a product or major business line through the full lifecycle, owning discovery, strategy, UX, launch, and iteration, rather than managing isolated features.
- Deep expertise in user research, persona development, and Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) frameworks. You can articulate who your users are and why they behave the way they do with concrete evidence.
- Thrives in ambiguous, zero-to-one or rapid evolution environments (e.g., tech scale-ups, agile media platforms, or dedicated product pods) where cross-functional leadership is key.
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills to effectively partner with a wide range of stakeholders.
- Experience with editorial partners and a curiosity about content, formats, and story-telling
- A strategic thinker who can balance the needs of the user with the goals of the business. Comfort with ambiguity and new product spaces.
