How to Apply to The Guardian

17 min read Last updated April 20, 2026 24 open positions
Blake Crosley
Blake Crosley Researched using publicly available information, hiring data, and ATS analysis.

Key Takeaways

  • The Guardian's underlying ATS is Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM, branded as Guardian Careers and hosted in Oracle's EU region. The workwithus.theguardian.com site is a custom WordPress front-end that funnels every applicant into the same Oracle system.
  • Ownership matters and shapes everything. Guardian Media Group plc is wholly owned by the Scott Trust Limited, which exists in perpetuity to secure editorial and financial independence. There are no external shareholders. CEO Anna Bateson runs the business; Editor-in-chief Katharine Viner runs the journalism, and the two roles are deliberately separated.
  • Reader revenue is the dominant funding source. Roughly 1.4 million paying contributors, no paywall, around £300 million annual revenue, and approximately 1,800 staff worldwide. This model is treated internally as a moral commitment.
  • Salaries trail prestige UK competitors at every level for editorial roles, and trail London tech market for engineering and product, but pay bands are transparent, gender and ethnicity pay gaps are published, and negotiation happens within bands rather than on top of them.
  • Be ready to discuss the 2024 sale of the Observer to Tortoise Media thoughtfully. It remains internally sensitive and you will be judged on whether you can engage with it as the complex decision it was.
  • Read and acknowledge the Guardian's published AI guidance before applying. AI assistance for spelling, grammar, and accessibility is permitted; presenting AI-generated work as your own is treated as a values failure, not a minor lapse.
  • Entry routes that bypass the standard application include the Scott Trust Bursary (six fully funded journalism master's bursaries, targeted at underrepresented backgrounds), the Software Engineering Fellowship (12-month structured programme rotating across teams), the Positive Action Scheme, and the Commercial Internship.
  • Hybrid policy is real and varies by team. Engineers are in the London office one day a week; engineering managers and the head of engineering, three days a week. Editorial varies by desk.

About The Guardian

The Guardian is one of the most distinctive employers in global media — a left-leaning, reader-funded UK newspaper with a digital footprint that reaches over 145 million unique browsers a month. It is published by Guardian News & Media Limited, a subsidiary of Guardian Media Group plc, which is in turn wholly owned by the Scott Trust Limited. The Scott Trust exists for a single purpose written into its constitution: to secure the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity. There are no external shareholders, no dividend obligations, and no proprietor sitting above the editor. That structure is the single most important thing to understand before you apply, because it shapes everything from how decisions are made to why salaries look the way they do. The organisation is headquartered at Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, with major hubs in New York, Sydney, and a growing European presence following the 2023 launch of the Guardian's European digital edition. Total headcount sits at roughly 1,800 staff across editorial, product and engineering, advertising (Guardian Labs), marketing and reader revenues, and corporate functions. Annual revenue runs at approximately £300 million, and uniquely for a publisher of its scale, more than half of that revenue now comes directly from readers — around 1.4 million paying digital supporters plus print subscribers — rather than from advertising. The Guardian famously refuses to put up a paywall, asking instead for voluntary contributions, and that financial model is treated internally as a moral commitment, not a tactic. Leadership in 2026 is split deliberately. Anna Bateson serves as Chief Executive of Guardian Media Group, responsible for the commercial and operational health of the business. Katharine Viner has been Editor-in-chief since 2015 and is responsible for editorial direction; she reports to the Scott Trust, not to the CEO. This separation is enforced by the Trust's constitution and is a non-negotiable part of working at the Guardian. The current Chair of the Scott Trust is Ole Jacob Sunde. The Guardian also publishes Guardian Australia (founded 2013) and Guardian US (founded 2011), each with substantial editorial autonomy. A major recent change you should be aware of: in late 2024, after a contentious internal process and a high-profile journalist strike, Guardian Media Group sold the Observer — its 233-year-old Sunday sister title — to Tortoise Media. The Observer is no longer part of the Guardian's operations, and applying to write for it now means applying to a separate company. The sale remains a sensitive subject inside the building, and you should be prepared to discuss it thoughtfully if it comes up in a senior editorial interview rather than treating it as ancient history. The Guardian is a certified B Corporation, has published a public Equality Report and an Environment Pledge, and has commissioned its own Legacies of Enslavement report acknowledging links between its 19th-century founders and the transatlantic slave trade. These are not marketing exercises — they are referenced in onboarding, in editorial decisions, and in performance reviews. If you are looking for a corporate environment where commercial returns are the primary measure of success, the Guardian is the wrong place. If you want to work somewhere that treats journalism and the public interest as the reason the company exists, it is one of a tiny handful of options at this scale anywhere in the world.

Application Process

  1. 1
    Find roles at workwithus

    Find roles at workwithus.theguardian.com (note the URL — workforus.theguardian.com redirects here). The careers site is a custom WordPress build maintained by the Guardian's in-house team, and despite the modest visual styling it is the only legitimate channel. Job listings are organised by team (Editorial, Product and Engineering, Advertising, Marketing and Reader Revenues) and by location, with a small but genuinely current job board that typically shows 10 to 24+ open roles at any time across the UK, US, and Australia.

  2. 2
    Click through to a role you want and read the full listing on the workwithus sub

    Click through to a role you want and read the full listing on the workwithus subdomain. The 'Apply' button on every job page redirects you out to fa-euxy-saasfaprod1.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com — this is Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM, the Guardian's underlying applicant tracking system. The branded site at this URL is called 'Guardian Careers' and is configured as Oracle CX site CX_1. This is where your actual application is created, stored, and reviewed.

  3. 3
    Create an Oracle candidate profile

    Create an Oracle candidate profile. You can sign in with email, Google, LinkedIn, or Microsoft, or you can apply as a guest with email only. If you plan to apply to more than one Guardian role, create the full account — it lets you reuse your CV, track application status, and receive automated stage-change emails. Oracle HCM stores your data in the EU (the 'euxy' in the tenant URL refers to Oracle's EU data region), which is consistent with the Guardian's GDPR-first stance.

  4. 4
    Upload your CV as a PDF

    Upload your CV as a PDF. Oracle HCM's parser is competent — it will pre-fill name, contact details, employment history, and education — but you should always verify the parsed fields before submitting. Pay particular attention to date ranges and job titles; the parser is known to mangle anything formatted in two columns or with non-standard date strings. Keep your CV to two pages for editorial and commercial roles, and up to three pages for senior product and engineering roles where technical depth matters.

  5. 5
    Write a covering letter or 'work summary' specific to the role

    Write a covering letter or 'work summary' specific to the role. This is non-optional in practice. Oracle HCM provides a 'work summary' textarea on the application form, and Guardian recruiters explicitly read it. Generic letters are a fast rejection; the Guardian's editorial culture prizes specific, well-argued writing, and your application is the first sample of that you give them. Reference the actual section, vertical, or product you would be working on, and explain in plain language why the Guardian specifically — not 'a major newspaper' or 'a leading digital media brand'.

  6. 6
    Complete the equal opportunities and right-to-work questions

    Complete the equal opportunities and right-to-work questions. The Guardian asks the standard UK demographic monitoring questions plus questions specific to its Positive Action commitments. Answers are anonymised and held separately from the hiring panel; honest answers help the organisation track its own progress and do not affect your application. You will also be asked to confirm your right to work in the country of the role — the Guardian sponsors visas selectively for hard-to-fill product, engineering, and senior editorial roles, but most junior and mid-level positions require existing right to work.

  7. 7
    Acknowledge the Guardian's AI policy on the application screen

    Acknowledge the Guardian's AI policy on the application screen. The Guardian has published a public Guidance for the use of AI page that explicitly governs candidate behaviour. You may use AI for spelling, grammar, formatting, or to remove an accessibility barrier (and you should disclose the latter to your recruiter). You may not present AI-generated content as your own work, you may not use wearable AI or transcription technology in interviews, and you may not record interviews. Breaking these rules is treated as a values failure, not a minor lapse.

  8. 8
    Submit and wait

    Submit and wait. The Guardian's typical acknowledgement is an automated Oracle email within minutes, followed by a human recruiter contact within one to three weeks if you are progressing. Editorial roles, particularly senior reporting and editor positions, often run on a slower cycle of three to six weeks because the panel includes the section editor, who is also producing journalism in parallel. Engineering and product roles move faster, typically two to four weeks from application to first interview.

  9. 9
    Engage with the recruiter contact properly

    Engage with the recruiter contact properly. The Guardian's in-house Talent Acquisition team are not gatekeepers in the cynical sense — they coach candidates through the process, brief you on the panel, and will tell you what is being assessed at each stage. Treat the recruiter screen as a real conversation about the role, not a formality. If you are asked about salary expectations, give a researched range and explain your reasoning; the Guardian publishes salary bands internally and will not negotiate aggressively on top of advertised ranges.

  10. 10
    Do the assessed task

    Do the assessed task. Almost every role at the Guardian includes a written or practical task between the recruiter screen and the first formal interview. For reporters this is typically a writing test or pitch list. For sub-editors and production staff it is a live editing exercise. For software engineers it is a take-home coding exercise (the Guardian engineering team is documented to use small, realistic, time-boxed tasks rather than algorithm puzzles, and the codebase is largely Scala on the backend with TypeScript and React on the front-end — open-source on GitHub at github.com/guardian). For product designers it is a portfolio walk-through. For product managers it is a written exercise plus a strategy discussion.

Resume Tips for The Guardian

recommended

Lead with proof of public-interest impact, not job titles

Lead with proof of public-interest impact, not job titles. The Guardian hires people who can point to specific work — a story, a feature shipped, a product metric improved, a campaign that landed — and explain what changed in the world because of it. A bullet that reads 'Senior Reporter, Local Newspaper, 2020-2024' tells the panel almost nothing. A bullet that reads 'Investigated council housing failures across three boroughs; series prompted Local Government Ombudsman investigation and policy review' tells them everything they need to know in one line.

recommended

Match the language of the listing precisely

Match the language of the listing precisely. Oracle HCM does keyword matching on the parsed CV text, and Guardian recruiters use Oracle's candidate search to surface previous applicants for similar roles. If the listing asks for 'visual journalism', use those exact words rather than 'data viz' or 'infographics'. If the role is for a 'senior product designer, commercial', use 'commercial product design' rather than 'monetisation UX'. This is not gaming the system — it is making your CV findable to the people who would benefit from finding it.

recommended

Show range without padding

Show range without padding. The Guardian deliberately hires generalists who can move between teams; the Software Engineering Fellowship rotates fellows across teams precisely because that is the editorial culture in microcosm. A CV that demonstrates depth in one area and credible experience in two adjacent areas does much better than a CV that lists ten technologies or twenty bylines without context.

recommended

Quantify reach and outcomes the Guardian way

Quantify reach and outcomes the Guardian way. Internal metrics that matter at the Guardian are reader revenue impact, page views with reading time over a threshold, supporter conversions, time-to-publish improvements, and referrals from non-paying to paying readers. If you have ever owned any of these in a previous role, name the metric and the delta. If you have not, use the closest equivalent — unique users, completion rate, conversion rate, NPS — rather than guessing at numbers you cannot defend.

recommended

Show writing quality on the page

Show writing quality on the page. For any editorial, communications, marketing, or product role, your CV is itself a writing sample. Cut every cliché, every 'utilised', every 'leveraged synergies'. If you cannot write a tight CV bullet, the panel will assume you cannot write a tight standfirst either. Run your CV past a colleague who will mark it up honestly before you submit.

recommended

Be explicit about hybrid working preferences and location

Be explicit about hybrid working preferences and location. The Guardian's product and engineering hybrid policy is one day a week in the London office for engineers, three days a week for engineering managers and the head of engineering. Editorial expectations vary by desk and seniority — newsdesk and live news roles are largely office-based, opinion and features are more flexible, and bureau roles are based wherever the bureau is. State your situation clearly in the cover letter rather than waiting to be asked.

recommended

List public work and open-source contributions

List public work and open-source contributions. The Guardian publishes a substantial portion of its production code as open source on GitHub, and engineering candidates who have contributed to or used Guardian open-source projects (such as Frontend, dotcom-rendering, or the various Scala libraries) get a meaningful boost. For journalists, link to a portfolio site or an authored page on a previous publication; do not paste full clippings into the CV.

recommended

Do not hide career gaps or career changes

Do not hide career gaps or career changes. The Guardian's culture explicitly values non-linear careers and the Scott Trust Bursary exists in part to bring people into journalism from underrepresented routes. A two-year gap to caregiving, a career switch from teaching to data journalism, or three years freelancing while raising kids are all things the Guardian's hiring managers are trained to evaluate fairly. Explain the gap in one honest sentence in the cover letter.

ATS System: Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM (Oracle Recruiting / Oracle CX Recruiting)

The Guardian's careers front door at workwithus.theguardian.com is a custom WordPress site built on the in-house 'thirty_three' theme. It exists to tell the Guardian's story to candidates, but it does not store applications. Every Apply button on every job listing redirects out to Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM at fa-euxy-saasfaprod1.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com, where the candidate experience is branded as 'Guardian Careers' and configured as Oracle CX site CX_1. Oracle HCM is one of the four enterprise ATS systems used at the Guardian's scale (alongside Workday, SuccessFactors, and SAP SuccessFactors), and the Guardian's instance is hosted in Oracle's EU region — important for UK and EU candidates who care about where their personal data is stored. The system handles candidate accounts, CV parsing, equal opportunities monitoring, application status tracking, and the recruiter workflow on the back end. Once your application is in Oracle, you can sign back in at any time to update your CV, track stage changes, or apply to additional roles using a stored profile.

  • Apply through the Oracle HCM page, not by emailing recruiters directly or messaging Guardian staff on LinkedIn. The recruiting team will only act on applications that exist in Oracle, because that is the only system audited for fairness, demographic monitoring, and right-to-work compliance.
  • Save your CV as a single-column, text-selectable PDF before uploading. Oracle HCM's parser handles standard PDF layouts well but mangles two-column CVs, image-based PDFs (anything exported from Canva or Figma as a flattened image), and any document where the section headings are styled as graphics rather than real text.
  • Verify every parsed field after upload, especially employment dates and job titles. Oracle HCM pre-fills the structured fields from your CV, and a panel reviewing your application sees the structured fields first. Mistakes there make you look careless.
  • Use the Oracle 'work summary' textarea — do not leave it blank. Guardian recruiters specifically read this field as a short cover note, even if you have also attached a longer letter. Aim for three to five tight sentences that explain why this role and why now.
  • Create a real Oracle account rather than applying as a guest if you are interested in more than one role. Logged-in candidates can re-use parsed data, track every application's status, set job alerts that actually work, and avoid duplicate profile creation, which can cause your applications to be deduplicated against an older, weaker version of you.
  • Sign in with the same identity provider every time. If you used Google OAuth on your first application, do not switch to email-and-password on the second; Oracle treats these as separate accounts and your application history will fragment.
  • Do not be put off by Oracle HCM's dated interface. The Guardian's product and engineering teams have repeatedly pushed Oracle to improve the candidate experience, and there are known frustrations on the recruiter side too. The system is functional and the recruiters who use it are responsive; the front-end is just not the Guardian's own design language.

Interview Culture

The Guardian's interview process is explicitly values-led and slower than most commercial employers at the same salary band.

Expect a recruiter screen of around 30 minutes, followed by a written or practical task, followed by two to three rounds of panel interviews. For senior editorial roles a final conversation with the editor or a deputy editor is normal, and for senior product and engineering roles you can expect to meet the Chief Product Officer (Caspar Llewellyn Smith) or a member of the senior leadership team in the final round. Values fit is assessed throughout, not just in a separate behavioural round. The Guardian's stated values — set out by C P Scott in his 1921 centenary leader and reaffirmed in the modern values statement — are honesty, integrity, courage, fairness, and a sense of duty to the reader and the community. The behaviours the organisation tests for are: fostering a supportive and open culture, being curious and innovative and willing to fail and learn, embracing diversity and championing inclusivity, striving for excellence in pursuit of audience interests, and standing up for what is right rather than what is easy. Panels are trained to score against these explicitly. The most common reason strong candidates are rejected is not technical — it is a panel concern that the candidate is brilliant but would not thrive in a non-hierarchical, mission-led, decision-by-discussion environment. Interviews at the Guardian are conducted as conversations, not interrogations. Panellists will share information about themselves, the team, and the work in progress. They expect you to ask substantive questions back, including questions that might be uncomfortable — about the Observer sale, about reader revenue dependence, about diversity at senior levels, about the AI guidance, about how editorial independence is actually maintained when the commercial business has a tough year. Candidates who nod through the panel and ask only safe logistics questions at the end are read as either uninterested or insufficiently confident. The Guardian explicitly forbids the use of wearable technology that tracks or analyses personal data during interviews, will not record interviews without your knowledge or consent, and asks the same of you. Joining a remote interview from a quiet, distraction-free space matters more here than at most employers; the panel reads it as a signal of how you will conduct yourself in the work. For UK editorial roles, expect at least one round to be in person at Kings Place if you live within reasonable travel distance. Writing tests for editorial roles are realistic rather than artificial — you might be given a recent set of facts and asked to write a 400-word news story to a tight deadline, or to produce a pitch list of five stories you would write in your first month. For sub-editor and production roles the test is typically a live editing exercise on a poorly written piece of copy. For visual journalism and design roles, expect a portfolio walk-through followed by a creative brief and a discussion of how you would approach it. For software engineering, the take-home is small (a few hours, not a weekend), realistic, and discussed in detail at the next interview rather than scored in isolation. For product roles, the case study is followed by a strategy discussion in which the panel will push back on your reasoning to see how you handle disagreement. Salary discussions at the Guardian are unusually transparent for the UK media market. The organisation publishes pay bands internally, runs an annual gender pay gap and ethnicity pay gap report, and recruiters will tell you the band for a role on request. Negotiation happens within bands, not above them. This is a feature, not a bug — it is part of how the Guardian maintains a relatively flat pay structure and avoids the worst of media industry pay opacity. It also means you should walk in with realistic expectations: Guardian salaries for journalism roles trail the Times, Sunday Times, and Telegraph at every level, and trail the FT significantly at senior levels. Engineering and product salaries are mid-market for London tech, well below FAANG or fintech, but with a more balanced workload and better hybrid policy than most.

What The Guardian Looks For

  • Genuine alignment with the Guardian's mission, not just affinity for the brand. The panel can tell within ten minutes whether you understand why the Scott Trust structure exists and what reader-funded journalism actually demands of staff. 'I have always read the Guardian' is not enough; 'I have thought about what it means to work for an organisation with no shareholders and no proprietor' is.
  • Demonstrated craft in your specific discipline. The Guardian is a craft organisation and respects people who care about the unglamorous parts of their job — the sub-editor's eye for a misplaced comma, the engineer who writes a clean commit message, the designer who can defend their typographic choices, the reporter who triple-sources a quote. Generalist enthusiasm without a craft is a hard sell.
  • Comfort with non-hierarchical, opinionated environments. The Guardian's culture is collegial, talkative, and prone to long conversations about whether something is right. People who need clear top-down direction or who find disagreement uncomfortable struggle. People who like to think out loud, change their mind in public, and disagree productively thrive.
  • Evidence you have actively chosen the Guardian over higher-paying alternatives. This sounds harsh but is real — the panel needs to believe you will still be here in three years when a competitor offers you 30 percent more. Reasons that resonate include independence, mission, the Scott Trust structure, hybrid working, the editorial culture, and the international footprint. Reasons that do not resonate include 'good name on the CV' or 'stepping stone'.
  • Curiosity and intellectual range outside your immediate discipline. Guardian editorial culture treats every staff member as a reader of the rest of the paper. Engineers who follow the climate desk's reporting, product designers who can talk about a recent feature investigation, marketers who have an opinion on the latest podcast — these are all stronger candidates than equally qualified people who have only thought about their own function.
  • Professionalism around the Guardian's AI policy. The organisation has published explicit guidance, and panellists notice when candidates have read it. Acknowledging the policy unprompted — 'I used Grammarly on my cover letter and that is the only AI assistance in my application' — is a small but meaningful trust signal.
  • Willingness to talk honestly about commercial trade-offs. The Guardian operates a business. Candidates who treat reader revenue, advertising, or Guardian Labs branded content as dirty topics struggle in late-round interviews; candidates who can hold the editorial mission and the commercial reality in the same head do well.
  • Resilience and self-awareness. The Guardian gets criticised loudly and publicly, often by readers it serves. Staff are expected to absorb that criticism, learn from the legitimate parts, and not be destabilised by the rest. Panels probe for this in behavioural questions and look for stories of mistakes you have owned, not just successes you have claimed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does The Guardian use a real ATS or is the workwithus site the application system itself?
The workwithus.theguardian.com site is a custom WordPress front-end built on the Guardian's in-house 'thirty_three' theme. It is not the ATS. Every Apply button redirects to fa-euxy-saasfaprod1.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com, which is Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM (also marketed as Oracle Recruiting or Oracle CX Recruiting), branded for the Guardian as 'Guardian Careers' on Oracle CX site CX_1. Your application is created, parsed, scored, and tracked entirely inside Oracle. The data is hosted in Oracle's EU region.
Who actually owns The Guardian, and does that affect how I should approach the application?
Guardian News & Media Limited publishes the Guardian and is a subsidiary of Guardian Media Group plc, which is wholly owned by the Scott Trust Limited. The Scott Trust is the sole shareholder and exists in perpetuity to secure the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian. There are no external shareholders, no proprietor, and no dividends paid out. This affects your application in two practical ways: candidates are expected to understand and articulate why this structure matters, and the organisation has no obligation to chase short-term commercial returns, which shapes editorial decisions in ways most other major employers cannot match.
What does The Guardian pay, and how does it compare to other UK newspapers?
Salaries trail the Times, Sunday Times, Telegraph, and especially the Financial Times at every editorial level. Mid-career reporter salaries in London typically run from the high £30,000s to mid-£50,000s; senior reporters and section editors range broadly from the mid-£50,000s to low six figures depending on seniority and beat. Engineering and product salaries are mid-market for London tech — well below FAANG or fintech — but the trade-off is hybrid working, a sane workload, mission alignment, transparent pay bands, and a published gender and ethnicity pay gap. Salary negotiation happens within published bands, not above them.
Can I use ChatGPT or Claude to help write my Guardian application?
The Guardian has published explicit guidance on this, and you should read it at workwithus.theguardian.com/guidance-for-the-use-of-ai before applying. Using AI for spelling, grammar checks, or document reformatting is permitted. Using AI to remove an accessibility barrier is permitted, and you are encouraged to tell your recruiter so they can support you. Presenting AI-generated content as your own work is not permitted and is treated as a values failure. Wearable AI and recording technology are forbidden in interviews. The safest framing in your application is honesty: if you used a grammar checker, do not lie about it; if you wrote the substance yourself, that is what the panel wants to see.
What happened to the Observer and is it still part of The Guardian?
In late 2024, after a contentious internal process and a journalist strike at both titles, Guardian Media Group sold the Observer — its 233-year-old Sunday sister title — to Tortoise Media. The Observer is no longer part of the Guardian. If you are interested in working for the Observer specifically, you now apply to Tortoise Media, not the Guardian. The sale remains a sensitive internal subject and you should be prepared to discuss it thoughtfully if it comes up in a senior editorial interview. Treating it dismissively or pretending you are unaware of it is a poor signal.
How competitive is the Software Engineering Fellowship and the Scott Trust Bursary?
Both are highly competitive and run on annual application windows that are usually closed by the time most candidates discover them. The Scott Trust Bursary funds six aspiring journalists per year through a master's in journalism, with full tuition and a subsistence allowance of at least £7,415, plus up to six weeks of work experience and a Guardian mentor. Eligibility requires meeting at least one underrepresented-background criterion (lower socioeconomic background, Black/Asian/Minority Ethnicity, LGBTQ+, or disability). The Software Engineering Fellowship is a 12-month paid scheme rotating fellows across teams with no specific degree requirement — you need to demonstrate that you can code, but not where you learned. Set a calendar reminder to check both pages in autumn each year.
Will The Guardian sponsor a UK work visa?
The Guardian holds a UK skilled worker sponsor licence and will sponsor visas selectively, primarily for hard-to-fill senior product, engineering, and specialist editorial roles where the right candidate is unavailable in the existing UK labour market. Most junior and mid-level roles, particularly in editorial, advertising, and marketing, require existing right to work in the country of the role. The job listing will state whether sponsorship is available; if it does not mention sponsorship, the safest assumption is that it is not. International candidates should apply primarily to roles that explicitly mention visa support or to bureau roles in the country where they already have right to work.
What is the Guardian's office like and how often will I have to be there?
The London office is at Kings Place, 90 York Way, N1 9GU, immediately north of King's Cross station. Hybrid expectations vary by team. In Product and Engineering, software developers and engineers are expected in the office one day per week; engineering managers and the head of engineering are in three days per week. Editorial expectations vary by desk — newsdesk and live news roles are largely office-based, opinion and features more flexible, and bureau roles are based wherever the bureau is. New York and Sydney offices follow similar hybrid patterns adapted to local team size. The Guardian also operates a flexible bank holiday policy: staff can choose to work on a UK public holiday and take a different day off that better suits their values, beliefs, or celebration calendar.
How long does the hiring process take?
From application submission to offer, expect three to eight weeks for engineering and product roles and four to ten weeks for editorial roles, with senior editorial searches occasionally running longer because the panel includes the section editor producing journalism in parallel. Oracle HCM sends an automated acknowledgement email within minutes of submission. Recruiter contact, if you are progressing, typically arrives within one to three weeks. Silence past four weeks usually means you are not progressing; the Guardian's recruiting team aims to respond to all candidates but volumes occasionally make this slow.
What questions should I ask the panel?
Strong candidates ask substantive questions and avoid safe logistics. Good options include: How is editorial independence actually maintained when the commercial business has a difficult year? What does the AI guidance look like in practice in this team? What is one thing the team has tried in the last twelve months that did not work, and what was learned? How does this role contribute to the reader-revenue model, directly or indirectly? What does success in this role look like at twelve months? How is feedback given and received in this team? Avoid asking only about salary, holiday, or remote working in the first round — those are recruiter screen questions, not panel questions.

Open Positions

The Guardian currently has 24 open positions.

Check Your Resume Before Applying → View 24 open positions at The Guardian

Related Resources

Related Articles

Sources

  1. The Guardian — Work with us (official careers homepage) —
  2. The Guardian — Job search (live vacancy listings) —
  3. The Guardian — Our values —
  4. The Guardian — Guidance for the use of AI —
  5. The Guardian — Editorial team page —
  6. The Guardian — Product and Engineering team page —
  7. The Guardian — Scott Trust Bursary —
  8. The Guardian — Software Engineering Fellowship —
  9. Guardian Careers application portal (Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM tenant, EU region) —
  10. The Scott Trust — Guardian Media Group ownership and constitution —
  11. Guardian Media Group — Corporate reports and policies —
  12. The Guardian — Equality Report 2025 (PDF) —
  13. The Guardian — Environment Pledge 2024 —
  14. The Guardian — Legacies of Enslavement report —
  15. Guardian open-source code on GitHub (engineering practices reference) —