Platform Team Leader

Village Media has an opportunity for an experienced and results-oriented Platform Team Leader to join our growing team!

Villager, our proprietary publishing platform, is recognized as a leading platform in the industry. It powers 144 local news websites across 3 continents, reaching five million weekly readers. The platform has been coded from the ground up and is continuously being enhanced and fine-tuned for performance and functionality. Beyond standard content management capabilities, the platform includes proprietary modules for polling, classified ads, user accounts, commenting, auctions, business directories, and more.

In 2024, the team also released a sister application called SPACES, which is a community social media platform. SPACES uses a modern technology stack and vanilla javascript for optimal performance.

Job Summary 

The Platform Team Leader is a pivotal supervisor role, responsible for overseeing and guiding the Platform Support team to ensure the Villager platform's technology and features are consistently aligned and operating smoothly. This role ensures the team upholds Village Media's commitment to speed and efficiency in news delivery and monetization. This role combines deep technical expertise with strong leadership and strategic oversight, managing day-to-day team operations, handling complex escalations, driving process improvements, and fostering effective collaboration with internal stakeholders and external partners.

Responsibilities:

• Manage workload distribution, set priorities, and ensure efficient execution of all platform support tasks.

• Foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement within the team, utilizing the "Playbook" as a core learning tool.

• Provide strategic oversight of Villager site monitoring to proactively ensure all technology and features are running smoothly across the network.

• Serve as the primary escalation point for complex technical issues encountered by end-users (CMS users or readers) or by team members.

• Help to diagnose intricate platform problems, coordinating with the development team for systemic solutions where necessary.

• Develop, analyze, and present comprehensive analytics reports and data to internal stakeholders, drawing insights from Google Analytics 4 API and Villager's internal Momentum engine.

• Lead the management and optimization of critical third-party integrations with the Villager platform, such as MailChimp, SendGrid, reCAPTCHA, Ontario 511, Stripe, and social media outbound (Facebook, Twitter, Apple News).

• Strategize and communicate significant integration changes to users and stakeholders, ensuring minimal disruption to daily workflows.

• Direct the creation and management of content categories, page updates, widget configurations, and the integration of advertising placements. This includes expert-level configuration of site containers, ad slots, and various site add-ons.

• Lead the onboarding of new publishing partners to the Villager platform, ensuring a seamless setup process.

• Act as the primary technical liaison between the development team and publishing partners throughout migrations, development projects, and ongoing support.

• Direct the enablement and configuration of various site add-ons, including user accounts, classifieds, Village IQ (polls), auctions, business directory, membership features, push notifications, text-to-speech, and news maps.

• Collaborate closely with the QA team to define and refine testing protocols, addressing any identified issues to ensure proper site functionality before and after launches.

• Initiate and implement process improvements for platform support operations, enhancing efficiency and effectiveness, drawing from insights gained through day-to-day operations and the evolving playbook.

• Ensure rigorous ad testing and public visibility checks are conducted prior to and during all site launches.

Qualifications:

• A strong understanding of Publisher-side ad technology is a must - including PreBid, Google Ad Manager, Google Analytics, and more

• Experience with HTML, CSS and JavaScript is considered an asset

• Advanced analytical and data interpretation skills, with proficiency in tools like Google Analytics.

• Strong project management skills, capable of coordinating complex tasks and migrations.

• Strong communication, written, verbal, interpersonal, and problem-solving skills

• Excellent analytical and troubleshooting skills, with a superior attention to detail 

• End user focus and high level of professionalism 

• Capable of working independently as well as with a team

• Ability to work in a fast-paced environment and balance multiple priorities

• Confident in making quick decisions on a variety of projects

If this is you, please apply! We want a cover letter and resume. This role can be in-office in Sault Ste. Marie, or remote in Ontario. 

Village Media only posts job listings on our careers portal at villagemedia.easyapply.co, on Indeed and on LinkedIn.  If you have found this listing anywhere else, it was scraped without our authorization or knowledge, and thus may be expired or inaccurate.  Applications are only accepted through the three sites listed above.

About Village Media

Village Media is where local news lives—and thrives. An ever-expanding network of community journalism websites, we cover the stories that matter most: the ones right in our backyards. A champion of hyperlocal news and information, Village Media publishes its articles on an innovative and scalable content management system (CMS) developed in-house. Born digital, our leading-edge company is a pioneer in its industry, continuously expanding its reach and changing the landscape of online news.

Village Media is committed to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion among our staff, volunteers, programs, and partners. We encourage applicants of diverse abilities, backgrounds, and life experiences to apply. If you require accommodations during the selection process, please contact hr@villagemedia.ca.

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