Job Description

VERSANT (Nasdaq: VSNT) is an industry-changing media and entertainment business and home to trusted brands that shape culture, inform audiences, and build lasting connections. It operates across four core markets: political news and opinion, business news and personal finance, golf, and sports and genre entertainment. These markets are served through a powerful portfolio of iconic and innovative brands, including CNBC, MS NOW, USA Network, Golf Channel, Oxygen, E!, SYFY, and Versant’s sports division USA Sports, along with complementary digital assets including Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow and GolfPass.

The Product Manager, Platform is responsible for owning and managing the product backlog that drives delivery across core platform engineering teams. Reporting into Platform Strategy, this role plays a critical part in scaling and optimizing VERSANT’s infrastructure platforms to improve performance, reliability, and cost efficiency at enterprise scale.

This role sits at the intersection of platform strategy and execution—translating strategic objectives into prioritized, actionable work across cloud, networking, and infrastructure domains. The Product Manager ensures that platform investments are aligned to business priorities, operational excellence goals, and long-term architectural direction.

Acting as a key liaison across Platform Strategy, Engineering, Operations, and Security, this role balances modernization, reliability, and cost optimization initiatives while ensuring teams are focused on delivering measurable platform outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

Backlog Ownership & Strategic Prioritization

• Own and manage the backlog for Infrastructure and Platform teams, aligned to Platform Strategy objectives.

• Translate strategic goals (performance, reliability, cost optimization) into epics, features, and user stories.

• Prioritize work across scalability, resilience, technical debt, cost efficiency, and new capabilities.

• Ensure backlog readiness with clear acceptance criteria and measurable outcomes tied to platform KPIs.

Platform Strategy Alignment

• Partner closely with Platform Strategy leadership to operationalize platform roadmaps and long-term vision.

• Support the development of scalable, resilient, and reusable platform capabilities across the enterprise

• Align infrastructure delivery with enterprise-wide platform standards, governance, and architectural direction.

• Provide input into roadmap planning, sequencing, and dependency management.

Cross-Functional Coordination

• Collaborate with Cloud Engineering, Infrastructure, Networking, Security, and SRE teams to manage dependencies and execution sequencing.

• Partner with Product, Application Engineering, and Program Management teams to ensure platform readiness for business initiatives.

• Facilitate trade-off decisions between cost, performance, risk, and delivery timelines.

• Act as a central coordination point across platform stakeholders.

Operational Excellence & Reliability

• Prioritize work that improves system reliability, observability, and operational maturity.

• Integrate incident learnings and root cause analysis into backlog prioritization.

• Support structured change and release processes to minimize risk and ensure platform stability

• Align backlog priorities with SLAs, SLOs, and operational KPIs.

Agile Delivery & Execution

• Lead backlog grooming, sprint planning, and prioritization activities.

• Partner closely with engineering teams to ensure clarity of requirements and unblock delivery.

• Track delivery progress and continuously refine priorities based on outcomes and platform performance metrics.

• Ensure alignment with CI/CD pipelines, release cycles, and multi-environment deployment practices

Stakeholder Communication & Value Tracking

• Provide clear visibility into backlog priorities, roadmap progress, and delivery outcomes.

• Communicate risks, dependencies, and trade-offs to technical and business stakeholders.

• Define and track KPIs related to platform performance, reliability, and cost optimization.

• Support executive reporting and decision-making through data-driven insights.

Qualifications

Basic Requirements

• 5+ years of experience as a Product Owner, Technical Product Manager, or similar role in platform, infrastructure, or cloud environments.

• Strong understanding of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and infrastructure systems.

• Experience managing backlogs and Agile delivery using tools such as Jira or ServiceNow.

• Proven ability to translate strategic objectives into prioritized technical work.

• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills across technical and business teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working within a Platform Strategy, DevOps, or Cloud Operations organization.

• Familiarity with cost management tools and cloud financial optimization (FinOps) practices.

• Experience supporting large-scale, highly available platforms in enterprise environments.

• Knowledge of ITIL practices, change management, and release governance.

• Experience working in a SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) environment or SAFe POPM certification.

Additional Information

As part of our selection process, external candidates may be required to attend an in-person interview with a VERSANT Media employee at one of our locations prior to a hiring decision. VERSANT Media's policy is to provide equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, gender identity or expression, age, national origin or ancestry, citizenship, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, veteran status, membership in the uniformed services, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law.

If you are a qualified individual with a disability or a disabled veteran and require support throughout the application and/or recruitment process as a result of your disability, you have the right to request a reasonable accommodation. You can submit your request to candidateaccessibility@versantmedia.com

VERSANT Media is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. We include a good faith pay range for each position to comply with applicable state and local pay transparency laws and to promote equity across our organization. Actual compensation will be based on factors such as the candidate's skills, qualifications, experience, and location and may include additional forms of compensation and benefits such as health insurance, retirement plans, paid time off, etc.

VERSANT Media is not accepting unsolicited assistance from search firms for this employment opportunity. All resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at VERSANT via-email, the Internet, or in any form and/or method without a valid written Statement of Work in place for this position from VERSANT's Talent Acquisition team will be deemed the sole property of VERSANT. No fee will be paid in the event the candidate is hired by VERSANT as a result of the referral or through other means.