# Events and Communications Lead

**Company:** [Astera](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/astera)
**Location:** Emeryville, CA
**Role:** Communications
**Salary:** $170k – $190k/yr
**Skills:** Event Planning, communications strategy, Contract Management, Vendor Management, content writing, editorial direction, Project Management, Budget Management, AI Tools
**Posted:** 2026-07-16

> Drive Astera Institute's events, convenings, and external communications to foster scientific conversations and community. Own end-to-end event execution, comms strategy, website/social management, and contractor oversight while partnering closely with leadership in an early-stage research environment.

## Job Description

## Event Management (40%)
- Design and run events end-to-end, from symposia to Friday socials: venue, vendors, logistics, guest experience, and the details that separate a good event from a memorable one.
- Build the operational infrastructure that lets programming scale: playbooks, vendor relationships, budgets, and tooling.
- Partner with Division leadership in developing the events and moments that accelerate our programming.
- Build the social fabric that turns a collection of researchers into a community, including the unstructured moments where good conversations happen.

## Communications (40%)
- Partner with leadership to shape Astera's external comms strategy (audiences, channels, content, etc) and own execution against it.
- Steward Astera's voice across the website, written materials, and external touchpoints, in close collaboration with leadership.
- Manage website, blog, and socials, including writing, editing, and coordinating updates as Astera's work evolves.
- Run the calendar of external-facing moments and the production pipeline behind it.
- Build and manage a roster of external contractors and consultants (writers, designers, PR, etc.) — knowing when to bring in specialists, scoping the work, and getting great output on Astera's timeline and budget.

## General Operations (20%)
- Flex to the "unknown unknowns" of a young, growing organization — event logistics, hub operations, cross-functional support during peak periods, and special projects across the Operations stack.

## Qualifications
- Demonstrated ability to design and execute high-quality convenings end-to-end, including the unglamorous logistics that determine whether they work.
- Capable writer, able to draft as needed in a voice applicable to Astera, and to give substantive editorial direction on everything else.
- Comfortable directing comms work and managing external contracts end-to-end across modalities (writing, design, web, video, social), including the judgment to know when to draft something yourself vs. bring in a specialist.
- Experience building the systems, playbooks, vendor relationships, and budgets that let programming scale without losing quality.
- Track record of working closely with technical or research-driven people in a way that earned their trust.
- Motivated by enabling science and technology that could reshape the future.
- Excited to define what a modern research institute looks and feels like, rather than inheriting an established playbook.
- Thrives in early-stage environments where the role will evolve significantly and the path forward is often ambiguous: comfortable proposing direction while staying calibrated to leadership's priorities.
- Values giving and receiving direct feedback as a cultural multiplier, and sees AI tools as an opportunity to uplevel how the work gets done.
- Generous collaborator who doesn't maintain strong boundaries around what "isn't your job".

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