Reporting to:

Head of Product

About the role

We're looking for a Product Manager to join the team responsible for the reader-facing experience across our platform. This is the part of Pugpig that millions of readers interact with every day. As a Product Manager on Core UX, you'll help shape how people discover, consume, and engage with content inside publisher apps built on Pugpig. That means working on everything from content personalisation and navigation to audio, video, notifications and onboarding, collaborating closely with engineering, design, QA, and our publisher customers.

This is a role for someone earlier in their product career who has the right instincts and wants to grow. You might be a designer who's been gravitating toward product decisions. You might be a junior Product Manager who's ready for more ownership. You might be coming from a UX research, content, or editorial role and have always thought in terms of the whole product, not just your corner of it.

What matters is that you're sharp, curious, care deeply about how people experience products, and want to learn how to do great product work in a team that will invest in your development.

You'll be embedded in a cross-functional team, working closely with the Head of Product, who will be your manager and mentor. You'll have real ownership and responsibility from the start, not make-work projects, but with the support structure to learn and grow.

What you'll be working on

Our 2026 roadmap is anchored around three pillars: making apps unmissable, turning attention into revenue, and opening up the platform. The Core UX team sits at the heart of the first two. Here's a flavour:

Personalisation and engagement. Our Follow feature lets readers follow authors, topics, and taxonomies to build a personal "For You" timeline. We're expanding this with smarter onboarding, notification preferences, behavioural signals, and AI-powered "here's what you missed" recaps and summaries.

Audio and video. We're building audio into the core reading experience, with dynamic streams, live radio, and audio summaries. We're introducing a dedicated vertical video experience with fullscreen swipe-based viewing.

Content discovery and recirculation. We're rethinking how readers find their next story, from configurable "Read More" modules to API-driven recommendations and editorial picks.

Experimentation. We're building a native A/B testing framework so publishers can test layouts, copy, and themes without app updates — making continuous experimentation part of how publishers optimise their apps.

Platform evolution. We're adapting to Apple's Liquid Glass design language, deepening Material 3 Expressive on Android, and refreshing our web app for stronger feature parity.

Subscriptions and monetisation. Dynamic paywalls, multi-stage metered access, and rebuilt subscription screens, areas where Core UX partners closely with our monetisation work.

About Pugpig

We are the best mobile publishing platform on the market and we work with the world's best media companies.
We work in close partnership with our customers to conceive, evolve, customise and operate our platforms, so they can focus on their core business.
Our platforms power hundreds of apps for the biggest media brands in the world, including The Independent, New Scientist, The Spectator, Condé Nast, Reach, DMG Media, CNN, Hearst and many more.
We work with news media, consumer magazines, B2B publishers and membership organisations.
Our teams in London, New York and the Philippines offer deep expertise and support to customers around the world.

Working at Pugpig

Here are some of the things you’ll experience if you come and join us:

You’ll be working with the world’s best media companies
Alongside an awesome, vibrant team of technology professionals
With a set of values that puts an emphasis on quality of life for all of our team members
Hybrid working and shorter days on Wednesdays and Fridays
Profit share scheme
Wellbeing support and healthcare options
Volunteering days every year so that you can support a charity that’s close to your heart
Training and conference budgets that help you stay on the top of your game

Our values

Be the solution
We take the initiative and seek to solve problems with creativity.
Make tomorrow better
We think critically about what will deliver our goals and improve tomorrow;
Our future selves will thank us.
Zoom out
We think big picture and look beyond our immediate field of vision.
Be kind
We communicate with kindness, openness and respect;
We approach interactions with a positive and supportive attitude.
Enjoy the ride
We have fun and prioritise quality of life, even when we’re up against it.

What we're looking for

We're hiring for who you are and how you think, not how many years you've spent in product management.

The traits that count

Genuine curiosity about how people use products. You notice things. You have opinions about why some apps feel effortless and others don't. You think about onboarding flows when you download a new app. You instinctively ask "why did they build it that way?" This isn't something we can teach. It's the foundation on which everything else is built.

Design sensibility and user empathy. Whether you come from a formal design background or you've just always gravitated toward the user experience side of things, you have a well-developed sense of what makes a product feel good. You care about the details - the micro-interactions, the information hierarchy, the moments that create delight or friction. You can articulate why something works, not just that it does.

Clear, structured thinking. You can take a messy problem and break it down. You write clearly. You can explain your reasoning to an engineer, a designer, or a publisher customer and make yourself understood. When you don't know the answer, you have a method for figuring it out.

Intellectual honesty and self-awareness. You know what you're good at and where your gaps are. You're comfortable saying "I don't know" and then going to find out. You take feedback well, not just graciously, but as a genuine input that changes how you think. When you're wrong, you say so.

Initiative and ownership. When you see a problem, you don't wait to be asked to fix it. You take responsibility for outcomes, not just tasks. If something isn't working, you flag it and propose what to do about it.

Appetite for learning. You want to get better. You read, you ask questions, you seek out people who know things you don't. You're not precious about your current skills, you're excited about the ones you haven't developed yet.

Experience that would give you a head start

We're deliberately not writing a long list of requirements. But some background that would help:

A design or UX background. Whether that's a design degree, time at an agency, UX roles, or self-taught design thinking. A portfolio or examples of work that show you understand how to design for real people would be brilliant.
Some exposure to product work. Maybe you've been a junior Product Manager, a designer who influenced product direction, or worked in a product-adjacent role (UX research, content strategy, editorial product). You've seen how product decisions get made, even if you haven't owned them yourself.
Comfort with mobile apps. You're a heavy app user with opinions. Bonus if you've worked on native iOS or Android products.
Interest in media, publishing, or content. You don't need to have worked in the industry, but genuine curiosity about how people consume news, magazines, and media content will serve you well.
What you don't need
A specific number of years in product management.
An MBA or a computer science degree.
Experience at a name-brand tech company.
A deep background in data science, AI, or machine learning (though curiosity about these things is a plus. We use AI tools extensively and you'll learn quickly here).

What you'll learn and how you'll grow

We're not hiring someone to fill a slot. We're hiring someone to develop into a strong product manager. Here's what we'll invest in:

Product craft. You'll learn how to run discovery, write effective requirements, prioritise under constraints, and ship work that moves metrics. You'll develop fluency in product strategy, OKRs, and outcome-oriented thinking.

Working with cross-functional teams. You'll be part of a cross-functional team with engineers, designers, and QA. You'll learn how to influence without authority, how to navigate trade-offs, and how to earn trust across disciplines.

AI-augmented product work. You'll learn to use AI as a core part of your workflow, for research, analysis, documentation, and decision-making. This is a skill set that will define great Product Managers for years to come, and you'll build it here from day one.

Publisher and media domain knowledge. You'll work directly with publishers and learn how the media industry works - subscription models, content strategy, audience engagement, advertising, and the technology stack that makes it all possible.

Mentorship and structure. You'll have regular 1:1s, quarterly check-ins, and bi-annual development reviews built around our Growth Framework. There's a £1,000 annual training budget and 5 days of training leave. And you'll be working alongside a product team that genuinely cares about helping each other improve.

If this role sounds like a great fit, get in touch with us, we’d love to hear from you!

Pugpig is committed to promoting an inclusive culture. We believe that diversity leads to a happier and more productive working environment.

We welcome suitably qualified applicants from all different backgrounds.

Please let us know if you have additional requirements. We are happy to make the necessary accommodations so that we can facilitate a positive recruitment process.

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