Program Manager, Communications

United States Digital Space LLC; New York, San Francisco (NY, CA); Hybrid; USD 265,000 - 295,000; Full time

Job summary

United States Digital Space LLC seeks a Senior Program Manager for its Communications team. You will lead the operating rhythm for major campaigns, translate complex initiatives into clear workstreams, and surface critical decisions to leadership under pressure.

This role requires 10+ years in program management or communications operations, a track record of guiding high-visibility programs, and the ability to influence senior stakeholders without formal authority. Hybrid work policy applies.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in program management, communications operations, or a closely-related discipline.
• Deep understanding of how communications functions and campaigns operate.
• Proven track record leading complex, high-visibility programs under pressure.
• Ability to influence and align senior stakeholders without formal authority.

Responsibilities

• Run the operating rhythm for major campaigns: planning, prioritization, status reporting to leadership, and retrospectives.
• Translate fast-changing, ambiguous projects into clear workstreams, owners, timelines, and decision points.
• Serve as a strategic thought partner: surface risks and tradeoffs and drive decisions under pressure.
• Build alignment across cross-functional partners (Product, Marketing, Policy, Legal, Research, Executive teams).
• Anticipate bottlenecks and resolve them under tight timelines.
• Design and improve the team0s operating framework with playbooks, crisis protocols, escalation paths, and coordination models.

Skills

Program management

Communications operations

Crisis management

Cross-functional leadership

Stakeholder management

Education

Bachelor's degree

Job description

About the company

the company’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.

About the role

As Program Manager on the company's Communications team, you'll be the person the Communications team relies on when stakes are highest: product launches, major announcements, and fast-moving reactive situations. You'll turn complexity into clarity — structuring the work, orchestrating the people, and surfacing the right decisions to leadership at the right moments.

This is a senior role for someone who deeply understands how communications teams operate — how campaigns come together, how crisis response actually unfolds, where things break down — and pairs that fluency with exceptional program management craft. You'll work across external, internal, and editorial communications and partner closely with comms leadership, serving as connective tissue across the organization.

Communications is fluid: news breaks, plans change, launches move. The right person brings structure without rigidity, creating clarity under pressure and flexing to absorb a last-minute pivot.

Responsibilities:

• Run the operating rhythm for major campaigns: planning, prioritization, status reporting that keeps leadership informed without slowing the team down, and retrospectives that produce real improvements
• Translate fast-changing, ambiguous projects into clear workstreams, owners, timelines, and decision points, so the comms team always knows what's happening, who owns what, and which decisions are needed when
• Serve as a strategic thought partner: bring recommendations, surface risks and tradeoffs early, and drive decisions under pressure
• Build alignment and drive accountability across a wide range of cross-functional partners (Product, Marketing, Policy, Legal, Research, and executive teams), often without formal authority
• Anticipate operational bottlenecks before they hit and resolve them, often with incomplete information and compressed timelines
• Design and continuously improve the team's operating framework: launching playbooks, crisis response protocols, escalation paths, and cross-team coordination models, so each subsequent cycle becomes easier

You may be a good fit if you:

• Have 10+ years of experience in program management, communications operations, or a closely-related discipline, including significant time working in or alongside communications teams
• Deeply understand how communications functions work — how campaigns are built, how media moments unfold, and how crisis response operates in practice
• Have led complex, high-visibility programs under pressure, with a track record of bringing calm, structure, and momentum to chaotic situations
• Have experience with high-growth teams whose processes need to scale as fast as they are
• Can influence and align senior stakeholders across very different functions and working styles, without relying on formal authority
• Possess impeccable organizational skills, paired with the judgment to know when process creates clarity and when it gets in the way
• Think strategically in real time — connecting the immediate fire drill to the bigger picture and helping leadership see around corners
• Are genuinely flexible: comfortable with last-minute pivots, shifting priorities, and plans that change mid-flight
• Are relentless about follow-through: you don’t let things drop, even when the team is at its busiest
• Communicate with exceptional clarity, especially when synthesizing messy situations for executive audiences
• Care about ensuring that transformative AI systems are developed safely

Strong candidates may also have:

• In-house communications or agency experience at a high-growth technology company
• Direct experience supporting crisis communications or rapid-response efforts
• Experience standing up program management or operations functions from scratch
• Familiarity with the AI landscape and the issues shaping the public conversation around it

The annual compensation range for this role is listed below.

For sales roles, the range provided is the role’s On Target Earnings ("OTE") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonuses target and annual base salary for the role.

Annual Salary:

$265,000-295,000 USD

LogisticsMinimum education:

Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience

Required field of study:

A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience

Minimum years of experience:

Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position

Location-based hybrid policy:

Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.

Visa sponsorship:

We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.

We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification.

We think AI systems like the ones we’re building have enormous social and ethical implications.

We think this makes representation even more important, and we strive to include a range of diverse perspectives on our team.

How we’re different

We believe that the highest-impact AI research will be big science. At the company we work as a single cohesive team on just a few large-scale research efforts. And we value impact — advancing our long-term goals of steerable, trustworthy AI — rather than work on smaller and more specific puzzl