Senior Product Manager, Audience Lifecycle Tools

OVERVIEW

A thriving, mission-driven multimedia organization, NPR produces award-winning news, information, and music programming in partnership with hundreds of independent public radio stations across the nation. The NPR audience values information, creativity, curiosity, and social responsibility – and our employees do too. We are innovators and leaders in diverse fields, from journalism and digital media to IT and development. Every day, our employees and member stations touch the lives of millions worldwide.

Across our organization, we’re building a workplace where collaboration is essential, diverse voices are heard, and inclusion is the key to our success. We are committed to doing the right thing in our journalism and in every role at NPR.

This means that integrity, adherence to our ethical standards, and compliance with legal obligations are fundamental responsibilities for every employee at NPR.

Intro to Position

NPR is scaling and maturing our audience engagement practice into a unified, data-driven, cross-platform growth and engagement engine, and lifecycle management is at the center of that transformation. This role owns the lifecycle activation tools, with a mandate to replace manual, campaign-by-campaign execution with scalable, AI-enabled (where appropriate) processes, and their work focuses on key touchpoints of engagement such as email acquisition, repeat engagement and donation conversion/retention.

This role works in daily partnership with Data, Editorial, Marketing, Design, Engineering and Product teams with a mission to make every relationship touchpoint personalized, measurable, user-friendly and tied to business outcomes.

This is a union-represented role covered under the terms of a collective bargaining agreement with NABET-CWA DMU.

Responsibilities

• Product Strategy & Roadmap Ownership: Lead the product roadmap for NPR's audience lifecycle and martech ecosystem (including Piano.io and Salesforce Marketing Cloud), translating stakeholder requirements into prioritized engineering backlogs.
• Martech Operationalization & Tooling: Build, configure, and operationalize internal-facing audience activation tools, establishing intuitive self-serve processes, user permissions, and governance guardrails for content and marketing leads.
• Audience Journey Optimization: Partner with cross-divisional teams to design scalable automation rules and capabilities that enhance the full listener journey—from email discovery and content re-engagement to recurring donation conversion and win-back.
• Data Integration & Measurement Alignment: Collaborate with Data and Analytics teams to enhance customer data platform (CDP) segmentation, tracking taxonomy, and attribution modeling to measure the direct impact of activation campaigns.
• Newsletter Product Infrastructure: Drive technical development and platform enhancements for the NPR editorial newsletter suite in close coordination with newsroom and product leadership.
• AI & Workflow Efficiency Integration: Evaluate and deploy practical, responsible AI and automation capabilities within lifecycle workflows to minimize repetitive manual execution.
• Diverse Audience Engagement: Support audience diversification goals by designing personalization and segmentation workflows that welcome and sustain cross-generational and diverse audiences across digital touchpoints.
• Standard Operating Procedures & Enablement: Author product documentation, establish lifecycle governance best practices, and conduct internal training sessions to ensure cross-departmental adoption of activation tools.
• The above duties and responsibilities are not an exhaustive list of required responsibilities, duties and skills. Other duties may be assigned, and this job description can be modified at any time.

Minimum Qualifications

• 5+ years of digital product management experience managing complex platforms, with a track record of driving measurable business or audience outcomes.
• Substantive experience managing enterprise marketing automation platforms, customer data platforms (CDPs), or audience lifecycle suites (e.g., Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Piano.io, Braze, Segment).
• Demonstrated experience translating complex cross-departmental requirements into structured user stories, technical specifications, and prioritized roadmaps.
• Proven track record leading technical software migrations, vendor integrations, or enterprise tooling rollouts.
• Strong background in data-informed product development, including experience with digital analytics, cohort tracking, and structured A/B testing.

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior experience within a media organization, digital publishing company, non-profit, or subscription/membership-driven enterprise.
• Practical experience implementing AI-enabled automation or algorithmic segmentation within marketing workflows.
• Familiarity with user privacy regulations, consent frameworks, and modern consumer data compliance standards.
• Required Skills/Competencies
• Systems Thinking: Ability to synthesize inputs from across a federated matrix of stakeholders into a coherent product architecture and execution plan.
• Internal Tool & Platform Enablement: Deep empathy for internal users, balancing self-service flexibility with structured organizational guardrails.
• Data Literacy & Attribution: Fluency in customer segmentation logic, data pipelines, retention funnels, and performance reporting.
• Cross-Functional Influence: Superior written and oral presentation skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical partners.
• Iterative Problem Solving: Ability to prioritize high-leverage product enhancements and maintain roadmaps through periods of organizational or technical evolution.
• Education Requirements
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Business Administration, Marketing, or related field, OR equivalent practical work experience demonstrating equivalent technical and product management capability.
• Work Location & Requirements
• NPR Remote-Permitted
• : This is a remote-permitted role. This role is based out of our Washington, D.C. office, but the employee may choose to work on a remote basis from a location that NPR approves. You will have the option of working (a) remotely from a location of your choosing within the United States that is supported by NPR; (b) on-site at an NPR facility, based on the availability of desks and approval from NPR; or (c) a combination of both. Regardless of where you choose to work from, you may be expected to travel to other locations from time to time to perform the duties of your position.
• Job Type
• This is a full-time, exempt position.