# Director, Communications

**Company:** [Exa](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/exa)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA
**Role:** Communications
**Salary:** $200k – $300k/yr
**Experience:** 8+ years
**Skills:** ghostwriting, public relations, media strategy, executive branding, crisis communications, press management, speaking program management, social media strategy, ai literacy, Technical Writing
**Posted:** 2026-07-31

> Build and manage the public voice of Exa and its AI thought-leader founders through high-volume ghostwriting, speaking pipelines, press strategy, owned social channels, narrative control for company moments, and crisis readiness. Requires 8+ years in comms/PR with strong ghostwriting samples, tech media results, and technical literacy in AI/search.

## Job Description

## What You'll Own

**Executive and founder brand**
- Own the development and expression of our leaders' public points of view: essays, tweets, op-eds, interviews, and the editorial calendar behind them.
- Ghostwrite at volume and at quality.
- Success is measured by audience growth, engagement from the people we want listening, and the leaders' own confidence that the words are theirs.

**Speaking program**
- Own the pipeline of conferences, podcasts, panels, and industry moments: sourcing, evaluating, securing, prepping, and coaching.
- Success is measured by the quality of placements accepted and by performance in the room.

**Press and media**
- Own media strategy and results, managing our agency today and building the in-house function over time.
- Own launch coverage, reactive and inbound press, relationships with the reporters who matter in AI infrastructure, and the messaging discipline behind every conversation.
- Success is measured by coverage that reaches technical and enterprise buyers, not just volume.

**Social and owned channels**
- Own company social presence and editorial cadence: what we say, when, in what voice, and how we amplify the work of our engineers.
- Coordinate employee engagement to amplify company socials.
- Success is measured by owned audience growth and by whether developers find our channels worth following.

**Narrative for company moments**
- Own the story and calendar for announcements, launches, milestones, and anything that requires a coordinated public position.
- Success is measured by message discipline across every surface on the day.

**Crisis and issues readiness**
- Own the playbook before we need it: escalation paths, holding statements, spokesperson prep, and judgment about when to engage versus stay quiet.
- Be ready with a rapid response when reporters need a soundbite.
- Success is measured by calm, fast, correct handling when something breaks.

**AI-first practice**
- Use AI in research, drafting, and measurement, but show good judgment in keeping human authenticity in our public statements and thought leadership.

## What Success Looks Like
- Our founders and executives have distinct, credible public voices, with output shipping on a reliable cadence.
- Speaking placements are good enough that we turn some down.
- Owned channels grow an audience that includes the developers and buyers we care about.
- Press coverage lands with technical and enterprise audiences and holds up factually.
- Every major company moment lands with one consistent story.

## What This Role Does Not Own
- Technical blog, benchmarks, and organic discovery content: Technical PMM for Content.
- Developer community, hackathons, and evangelism: Developer Relations.
- Product positioning and messaging architecture: Product Marketing.
- Demand generation, paid channels, and website: Revenue Marketing and Digital Marketing.
- Customer case studies and partner co-marketing: Customer & Partner Marketing.

## Who You Are
- 8+ years in communications, PR, or editorial roles, including time inside a high-growth technology company rather than only agency-side.
- Exceptional writing craft, specifically ghostwriting. Bring samples you wrote for someone else's byline, with permission to discuss them.
- A track record building an executive's public profile and social followers, with evidence of what drove the growth.
- Real press results in technology or enterprise media.
- Experience securing meaningful speaking placements and prepping people to perform in them.
- Experience managing an agency well: setting the brief, holding them to results, and knowing when to override them.
- Sound judgment under pressure. You have handled at least one genuinely difficult public moment.
- Enough technical literacy to write credibly about AI, search, and infrastructure without embarrassing the person you are writing for.

## Nice to Have
- A journalism or editorial background.
- Experience in AI, developer tools, or deep technology, and existing relationships with reporters in that beat.
- Analyst relations experience, since this becomes relevant as we sell more to the enterprise.
- Experience building a comms function in-house from an agency-first setup.
- Comfort producing beyond text: video, podcast, or event formats.

## Benefits
- Health and wellness: Premium medical, dental, and vision coverage, plus a monthly wellness benefit and a monthly commuter benefit for our SF team.
- Fertility and family planning: Reimbursement for eligible egg freezing and related medical expenses up to a $15,000 lifetime maximum, plus 16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for all new parents, whether through birth, adoption, surrogacy, or foster placement.
- Life at Exa: Lunch and dinner served daily, an office stocked with snacks, coffee, and health supplements, fresh bread from a local bakery every morning, weekly milk tea deliveries, monthly picnics, and parties to celebrate the wins (and each other).
- Visa sponsorship: We sponsor visas for exceptional candidates and welcome applicants from all backgrounds and locations.

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