Features Editor – What's On, Abu Dhabi
Skills
About This Role
Overview
*What's On*
is building towards a clear position: the most useful, most trusted lifestyle guide in the UAE.
The Features Editor – Abu Dhabi is the person who owns that position in the capital, producing the daily digital content, long-form features, and social video that makes the brand essential to Abu Dhabi residents and visitors.
This is a strategic and production role at a brand in active transformation.
It suits an experienced journalist or content creator who is equally comfortable filing a restaurant review, producing a TikTok, and writing a 1500-word feature – and who understands the difference between all three.
About The Role
This is
*What's On*
's most senior Abu Dhabi editorial role.
The Features Editor owns the Abu Dhabi content calendar – planning, commissioning, writing, and publishing across the website, social channels, and the monthly print magazine.
The role produces at volume across owned channels while also writing the long-form, carefully researched features that define the brand's editorial authority in the capital.
What You Will Responsible For
- Editorial and digital:
- Own the Abu Dhabi content calendar across digital, social, and print.
- Publish 50+ SEO-optimised articles per month – news, reviews, features, and listings.
- Write long-form features on the Abu Dhabi lifestyle, culture, and hospitality landscape for the monthly magazine.
- Consistenly break exclusive or first-to-market stories.
- Contribute to series formats.
- Social and video:
- Produce a minimum of 16 social posts per month – carousels and tiles planned to the content calendar.
- Produce a minimum of 8 short-form social videos per month for TikTok and Instagram Reels.
- All social content is distinct from article amplification posts – these are original, platform-native formats.
- Maintain daily Stories across Instagram and Facebook.
- Monitor search trends and audience data to inform both SEO and social content decisions.
- Build and maintain Abu Dhabi PR and industry relationships to secure access and exclusives.
Experience
3-5 years in digital publishing, features writing, or lifestyle journalism.
UAE experience is preferred.
Abu Dhabi-specific knowledge is a genuine advantage.
SEO: Applied SEO knowledge – writing headlines for search, keyword strategy, content structure, meta data.
Not just awareness of what SEO is.
Social video: Independent production of short-form video: shooting, editing, and publishing without a production team.
TikTok and Reels experience required.
Analytics: Comfort using GA4, Parsley, or equivalent to review content performance and make editorial decisions based on data.
Editorial voice: Strong written English.
Portfolio evidence of both high-volume digital publishing and long-form editorial writing.
Network: Established UAE media and PR contacts, or clear evidence of how you would build them in Abu Dhabi quickly.
About
*WHAT’S ON*
:
*What's On*
has been the UAE's lifestyle authority since 1979.
It covers food and dining, nightlife, things to do, travel, culture, family, sport, shopping, and news in print, on the website, and across social channels and email.
The brand is in active digital transformation and this is a genuine growth moment – the Features Editor – Abu Dhabi is a central part of it.
*What's On*
is part of Motivate Media Group, which has operated across the GCC since 1979 with a portfolio that includes
*Gulf*
*Business*
,
*Emirates Woman*
,
*Campaign Middle East*
,
*identity*
,
*Business Traveller Middle East*
, and
*Golf Digest Middle East*
.
How To Apply
- Send a CV, two or three writing samples that represent the range of your work (long-form and digital), and a short covering note – no longer than one page – that addresses the following:
- What draws you to Abu Dhabi as an editorial territory and what specifically do you know about it?
- How does your current or most recent role prepare you for the output volume and format range this role requires?
- What is one story you would break in Abu Dhabi in your first month?
- Applications without writing samples will not be reviewed.
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