Director, News Product and Operations

• Compensation: USD 170,000 - USD 185,000 - yearly

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, Golf Now and Golf Pass.

We're looking for a Director of Product will help power that work by leading the product portfolio for the systems our teams use to plan, assign, produce, coordinate, collaborate, communicate, and move content from idea to execution. This role sits at the center of editorial ambition, production complexity, operational reality, and technology modernization. You'll own these tools for our news organizations - MS NOW and CNBC - as well as the other content creators around our company in Entertainment and Sports.

This is a leadership role for someone with a demonstrated history of product expertise. We are looking for a proven product leader who has owned complex portfolios, led teams, managed budgets, delivered against timelines, and helped large organizations modernize the tools and workflows that people depend on every day.

The right candidate understands that content creation is not one workflow. It is a thousand overlapping processes, shaped by deadline pressure, brand identity, live moments, breaking news, production realities, digital platforms, legacy systems, vendor constraints, executive priorities, and the very human need for tools that make work clearer instead of harder. This person should be able to talk credibly with journalists, producers, editors, show teams, sports operators, entertainment teams, engineers, architects, vendors, finance partners, and executives — and translate that complexity into product strategy, delivery plans, and measurable outcomes.

Working within the Operations & Technology organization, this leader will help modernize Versant’s full portfolio of content creation tools across news, sports, entertainment, lifestyle, digital, and cross-brand teams. That includes newsroom computer systems, editorial planning tools, assignment workflows, production coordination platforms, collaboration systems, communication tools, resource planning capabilities, and the enterprise platforms that help teams make content more effectively.

This role is for someone who can help teams create better work — not by admiring the complexity from a safe distance, but by getting close to the workflow, understanding what is broken, setting a clear product direction, making smart trade-offs, and leading a team that can deliver. The work will require modernization, consolidation, AI-enabled tooling, automation, stronger governance, better adoption, sharper reporting, more disciplined execution, and a practical understanding of how media teams actually operate.

• Own the vision, strategy, and roadmap for the tools Versant teams use to plan, assign, produce, coordinate, collaborate, communicate, and move content from idea to execution.
• Lead the modernization of content creation tools across news, sports, entertainment, lifestyle, digital, and cross-brand teams, with a strong focus on newsroom computer systems, production workflows, and the platforms people depend on every day.
• Get close to the work. Partner with journalists, producers, editors, show teams, planning teams, assignment desks, sports operators, entertainment teams, digital teams, and operations leaders to understand how content actually gets made.
• Turn complex workflows into clear product decisions, including where to simplify, where to standardize, where to preserve brand-specific needs, and where technology can reduce friction.
• Deliver committed roadmap initiatives according to agreed timelines, with clear scope, sequencing,…