Principal Product Business Analyst

Why Join Us?

You will be a key leader within one of our core pillars, working within the Times Product Customer Team. The team is made up of cross-functional squads of Product, Design, and Product Business Analysis professionals, supported by dedicated Delivery and Engineering teams.

You'll be joining at an exciting time in our product evolution, with the opportunity to execute product strategy and make a significant impact on our digital offerings.

What's the Role?

The Principal Product Business Analyst is the most senior analytical voice within their pillar. Operating within one of three programme pillars, this role sets the standard of excellence for analysis within that pillar, personally leads work on the most complex and highest-risk initiatives, and helps manage and develop the Senior BA working alongside them.

The Principal is the connection point between pillar-level analytical work and programme-wide strategy, ensuring their pillar's discovery output is commercially grounded, consistently high quality, and always pointed at the outcomes that matter most.

Your Team: You will join the Times Media Product team, reporting into the Head of Business Analysis, acting as a strategic partner between Product & Technology and our core Business stakeholder areas depending on your assigned team; Content, Monetisation or Customer.

Day to day you will

• Personally lead discovery analysis on the pillar's most complex and ambiguous initiatives - including user flows, process mapping, data mapping, and logic flows - setting the quality benchmark for the Senior BA within the pillar
• Own the standard of excellence for analysis within the pillar, defining and embedding templates, methodologies, and metric accountability frameworks that ensure consistency and quality
• Support the management and mentorship of the Senior BA within your pillar (if you have one assigned), building individual capability in product thinking, AI fluency, post-launch validation, and commercial framing
• Work closely with the Head of Business Analysis to maintain a view of programme priorities and ensure analytical effort is allocated to the highest-value initiatives, and not absorbed by low-value work
• Act as the connective tissue within the pillar, ensuring logic and decisions across its initiatives are consistent and don't create downstream problems for other teams
• Apply commercial literacy to connect analysis to revenue, cost, and trade-off decisions - building influential partnerships with senior stakeholders to keep a unified product vision intact
• Drive the practical application of the AI Playbook, ensuring the Product BA team are leveraging AI effectively in their daily work and continuously identifying new opportunities to improve analytical speed and quality

What we’re looking for from you

• Extensive experience leading discovery analysis on complex, high-risk product initiatives, with a track record of translating ambiguous problems into clear, executable logic
• Proven ability to operate at senior stakeholder level - building strong, trusted relationships with executive stakeholders, framing analysis in commercial terms, and driving rapid decision-making on high-stakes trade-offs
• Experience managing and developing Business Analysts, with demonstrable success in shifting ways of working toward higher-value, more product-led analysis. Where required, running end-to-end hiring for additional contract resource, from designing assessments through to evaluating and interviewing candidates
• Strong commercial literacy - able to connect analytical findings to revenue impact, cost to serve, and business opportunity, and communicate this fluently to non-analytical audiences
• Experience contributing to or improving practice standards, templates, or methodologies at team or programme level
• Ability to maintain a clear view of priorities and proactively allocate analytical effort to where it will have the greatest impact
• Awareness of competitive product landscapes, with the ability to incorporate competitor intelligence into strategic decisions and discovery planning
• Advanced, demonstrable use of AI tools in analytical work - including experience building or formalising AI workflows or productivity standards for a team

News UK is one of the leading media businesses in the UK and Ireland. Our newsbrands include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun, The Sun on Sunday and The TLS. Our national broadcast brands include talkSPORT, Times Radio and Virgin Radio UK, and we have market-leading local stations across Ireland. Our world-famous brands provide news, analysis, opinion and entertainment to almost 40 million people each month.

Spanning print and pixel, audio and video, events and experiences, our multi-format brands are home to a plurality of opinion, representing the diverse communities we serve. Driven by passion, guided by principles and acting with purpose, we exist to promote a fair society, freedom of speech and a little bit of fun.

Rethinking continually the business of storytelling, we represent, reflect and reach the nation, telling the stories that matter.

At News UK, we embrace a hybrid work model, currently requiring a minimum of three days per week in the office. This approach fosters collaboration, innovation, and team spirit within our workspace. Certain roles may necessitate additional in-office days; please discuss this with your recruiter for specific requirements.

Life at News

Driven by passion, guided by principles and acting with purpose. We represent, reflect and reach the nation, telling the stories that matter. We inform our audiences so that they can make decisions based on trusted information.

We represent, reflect and reach the nation, telling the stories that matter most. To ensure these stories resonate with as broad an audience as possible, it is essential that our organisation reflects the diversity of the people we reach. Whether through age, gender, ethnicity, disability, social class or sexuality, we are committed to representing the rich variety of voices that make up our society.

And we champion a culture where everyone has the opportunity to contribute and thrive as we continue to innovate and drive long term sustainable growth. This is done through our Diversity Strategy.

At News UK, we take pride in our exceptional employee-led networks that bring together individuals with shared interests and create a vibrant sense of community. We believe our networks play a vital role in fostering a collaborative and supportive work culture at News UK. Groups that we support include the African & Caribbean Network, Parents and Carers, and LGBTQ+ group News Is Out, and the Apprentice Society.

Benefits

• Private medical insurance including coverage for pre-existing conditions
• Discounted gym memberships, free ClassPass at Home, weekly in person/ virtual exercise classes
• ‘Bikes for Work’ and ‘Electric Car’ scheme
• Up to 60% discount on Harper Collins books
• Maternity leave up to 18 weeks full basic salary & paternity leave up to 2 weeks
• Access to exclusive events and competitions with exciting brands such as talkSPORT, Virgin Radio UK & The Times. Weekly virtual panel chats with top journalists and celebrities
• Access to wellbeing benefits such as EAP, physio/massage and counselling
• A generous pension scheme with employer contributions of up to 5%
• Wide range of training available, plus full LinkedIn Learning access
• 25 days holiday, plus bank holidays and up to 4 volunteering days per year

We are committed to providing an inclusive recruitment process. If you require reasonable adjustments due to a disability or health condition at any stage of your application or interview, please let us know. You can contact us at careers@news.co.uk to discuss how we can support you to perform at your best.