Technical Director-Internal Products

About Us

The Financial Times is one of the world’s leading news organisations, globally recognised for its authority, integrity and accuracy, with a mission to deliver quality information and services worldwide.

At the FT, curiosity thrives and ambitious thinking is rewarded. Together, we help audiences stay better informed and deepen their understanding of the world around them.

Our Product & Tech teams drive us forward in an ever-evolving digital landscape, delivering cutting-edge products to over one million digital subscribers daily. Our growth relies on a diverse, dedicated and dynamic group of product, tech, delivery and data specialists.

With a supportive culture, entrepreneurial spirit and opportunities at every turn, there are no limits to where your FT career can take you.

Build a newsworthy career at the FT.

Our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion 

We believe in the power of unique perspectives and want all voices in our organisation to be heard, respected and valued. A supportive workplace is one where employees feel they can be themselves and operate to their full potential. We are committed to removing barriers for everyone, with a focus on addressing those faced by underrepresented groups.

The Role:

Reporting to the CTO, you will be accountable for the strategy, operations and people who comprise the department which provides the FT’s technology solutions, tooling, and infrastructure underpinning 

• Editorial Tech, serving the journalistic and editorial experience;
• CRM and Marketing Technologies (Salesforce, Bloomreach, Adobe Marketo), together with their integrations, serving marketing, sales and customer service across multiple businesses in FT’s portfolio;
• Enterprise technology supporting our operational functions such as Finance (Oracle), HR (Workday) and more.

Internal products at the FT comprise a mix tooling and services supporting over half of the FT’s workforce in their day-to-day work. Workflow and specialist software is predominantly procured from SaaS vendors, and supplemented by our in-house built content management & publishing platform, with a range of integration approaches.

You’ll be accountable for shaping the software & infrastructure solutions and tooling strategy that meets the needs of the FT’s editorial, marketing, sales, finance and human resources teams. The role - and our technology strategy - requires you to consolidate platforms, simplify integrations, manage change, and deliver the quality, reliability and security of the applications and platforms the FT offers. 

Key Responsibilities

Technology Directors are accountable for the technical nature, quality, support, operational service and security of the products, platforms and services and the welfare and development of the technical employees within their teams who create them. Specific duties and responsibilities for this role are as follows:

• Set the technical direction and strategy for your department.
• Lead engineering and technical staff to deliver incremental changes to products and services that comprise the business-user experience, balancing capacity for new development with maintenance and operational support.
• Keep under review the suitability of the Saas, software & infrastructure solutions to the needs of users (editorial, commercial, and operational staff across the organisation); ensure that communication with users encourages adoption.
• Actively manage and build strategic partnerships with key vendors. Ensure the FT gets value for money from suppliers, and carefully manages licences. Influence vendor roadmaps, evaluate new technology solutions for their value to the FT.
• Through continuous improvement, drive engineering and operational excellence across your team by setting and demanding standards. Ensure that all products and services have excellent out-of-hours support and SLAs. 
• Be available to take a lead incident management role in the most complicated and critical production incidents.
• Build, continuously develop and lead a large team of high performing cross-functional engineers and technical staff. Lead through engineering and team managers, with skilled delegation and clear direction.
• Promote a culture of accountability and continuous improvement, by setting clear objectives, modelling regular evaluation of processes, technology choices, and the structure and skills in teams, to adapt to changing needs and requirements.
• Ensure that engineering activities comply with the technology strategy, data protection regulations and cybersecurity best practices, minimizing risk and ensuring compliance with industry standards.
• Build and manage relationships with stakeholders and user groups across the FT.
• Manage a £multi-million annual budget, including building multi-year forecasts and planning ahead for Capital investment initiatives.
• Contribute to the Technology Senior Leadership Team (the CTO and their direct reports) to set the department strategy and engineering / operations direction. Provide context as needed to engineering teams.
• Act as an ambassador of the FT and its business objectives within the broader technology community, representing it in industry discussions, conferences, and strategic partnerships

This role will be right for you if...

• You have a track record of delivering platforms and solutions using market-leading SaaS solutions covering commercial domains of marketing, sales, and service, and ideally have worked in a platforms team within a wider product engineering division.
• You have experience managing vendor relationships and contracts, with a focus on quality of service and value for money.
• You have experience providing operational support, know how to manage incidents under pressure and lead engineers and technical staff working in these conditions.
• You can demonstrate excellent leadership across technology domains like development, quality, integration, support and architecture, and have a good working knowledge of developing and operating modern distributed software applications in the cloud.
• You can demonstrate the ability to think and act strategically, as well as recognising when to act tactically and operationally.
• You use a range of approaches to influence others and know how to build trusting, collaborative, productive relationships with peers, customers and stakeholders at all levels in a company.
• You are a people leader who can inspire and grow talent through a clear compelling vision for the future.

What’s in it for you? Our benefits

Our benefits vary by location, but we are committed to providing best-in-class perks across all our offices. These include generous annual leave, medical cover, inclusive parental leave packages, subsidised gym memberships and opportunities to give back to the community. Full details of our benefits are available here.

We’ve embraced a 50% hybrid working model (averaging two to three days onsite) that fosters trust and remote adaptability while encouraging in-person camaraderie and peer learning. Additionally, we are open to accommodating specific flexible working pattern requests for all roles where feasible.

Accessibility

We are a disability confident employer and Valuable 500 signatory.

Please let us know if you require any reasonable adjustments/personalisation as part of the application process or to enable you to attend an interview. If you would like to discuss your requirements or have any questions, email talent@ft.com and a member of our team will be happy to help.

Further information

At the FT, we embrace innovation and the use of technology and appreciate that individuals may leverage AI tools as part of their job application process. Whilst we are happy for you to use AI to assist with your application, it is essential that all information provided is authentic and accurately represents your skills, experience, and qualifications.