About Us
SPH Media's mission is to be the trusted source of news and lifestyle content in Singapore and Asia.
One of our core purposes is to produce credible, balanced, and objective news and analysis, always with a view to uphold the public good and fostering an informed, engaged citizenry.
We welcome talented individuals to join us and grow a career in a vibrant and collaborative environment built around a culture of respect and inclusivity.
As an employer, we are committed to rewarding our people fairly and developing them in their careers.
About the Role
The Senior Product Designer will play a key role in shaping digital product experiences across EMTM publications, including The Straits Times, The Business Times, Berita Harian, Tamil Murasu, and other related products.
This role is for an experienced and autonomous product designer who can lead design work from problem framing to implementation. The designer should be comfortable working across web, mobile web, native app, newsletters, and emerging digital product surfaces.
As EMTM moves towards more shared platforms, shared design systems, and cross-publication initiatives, the designer will help balance two important needs: creating consistent and scalable product experiences across publications, while preserving the editorial identity and audience needs of each brand.
The role requires strong product judgement, UX and UI craft, stakeholder management, and the ability to work with ambiguity. The designer should be able to partner closely with Product, Engineering, Editorial, Commercial, Data, and Customer Division teams to design experiences that support audience growth, engagement, subscription value, operational efficiency, and editorial credibility.
Experience in news, publishing, digital media, content platforms, subscription products, or consumer-facing products is a plus.
Roles & Responsibilities
- Lead end-to-end product design work across EMTM digital products, from early exploration and UX framing to final UI, handoff, QA, and post-launch iteration.
- Translate product, editorial, commercial, and audience goals into clear, practical, and high-quality design solutions.
- Contribute to shared UX patterns and design system improvements across key surfaces such as home pages, article pages, listing pages, navigation, search, app experiences, paywalls, premium labelling, and account/subscription journeys.
- Partner closely with Product Managers, Engineers, Editors, Data, Commercial, and Customer Division stakeholders to align on design direction and implementation.
- Maintain a high standard of UX, UI, hierarchy, accessibility, responsiveness, and editorial product craft.
- Provide constructive feedback and informal mentoring to junior and mid-level designers, helping improve their product thinking, UX framing, UI craft, and decision-making.
- Use product data, audience insights, usability principles, editorial priorities, and market trends to inform design decisions.
- Identify opportunities to improve design workflows, handoff quality, design QA, and cross-team collaboration.
Job Requirements
Skills
- Strong end-to-end product design capability across UX, UI, interaction design, prototyping, and design systems.
- Strong product judgement and ability to make decisions in ambiguous situations.
- Excellent understanding of responsive design across web, mobile web, native app, and tablet experiences.
- Strong visual craft, with attention to typography, hierarchy, layout, editorial presentation, and usability.
- Experience designing consumer-facing digital products, preferably in news, media, publishing, subscription, marketplace, content, or high-traffic platforms.
- Strong prototyping skills at different levels of fidelity, from quick concept exploration to stakeholder-ready prototypes.
- Good understanding of design systems, component libraries, scalable UX patterns, and platform consistency.
- Ability to interpret product metrics, audience behaviour, research findings, and experimentation results.
- Understanding of accessibility, usability heuristics, and design QA best practices.
Competencies & Personality Traits
- Highly autonomous and able to lead projects with limited day-to-day guidance.
- Comfortable working with ambiguity and turning broad direction into clear design proposals.
- Strong communicator who can explain design decisions in simple, practical terms.
- Able to balance user needs, editorial priorities, business goals, and technical constraints.
- Strong collaborator who can work effectively with Product, Engineering, Editorial, Data, Commercial, and Customer Division teams.
- Mature design judgement, with the ability to know when to push for quality and when to make pragmatic trade-offs.
- Generous with feedback and able to mentor less experienced designers without taking over their work.
- Able to raise the quality of the team through critique, pairing, and example-setting.
- Interested in the future of news, digital publishing, audience engagement, subscriptions, and AI-enabled product experiences.
- Comfortable working across multiple publications, each with different audiences, editorial identities, and product priorities.
Working Experience
- Ideally 5–7 years of experience in product design, UX/UI design, or consumer-facing digital product development.
- Experience leading complex product design projects from concept to implementation.
- Experience working with cross-functional teams including Product, Engineering, Editorial, Data, Marketing, or Commercial stakeholders.
- Experience in news, digital media, publishing, content platforms, subscription products, or high-traffic consumer products is strongly preferred.
- Experience mentoring junior or mid-level designers is preferred.
- Experience with design systems or multi-brand product ecosystems is a strong advantage.
- People management experience is not required.
Qualifications
- Degree or diploma in design, human-computer interaction, communication design, digital media, or a related field.
- Equivalent professional experience and a strong portfolio will also be considered.
