Digital Communications & Social Media Manager

About the Role

This role is built for a strategic storyteller and a hands-on operator. You will shape our narrative, sharpen our market position, and turn complex capabilities into stories that build trust, influence policy, and win business. You will use our digital communications channels to translate our work as a trusted partner in defense and aerospace into content that resonates with government customers, industry stakeholders, prospective employees, and the broader public. If you thrive on solving problems from scratch, leading through influence, and delivering polished work on time and on message, we want to hear from you.

Key Responsibilities

• Own social media channels end-to-end, including LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
• Develop and maintain content and channel strategy, defining what we say, where we say it, and how each platform serves our goals.
• Build the narrative framework and core messaging that keeps our voice consistent, confident, and aligned with our mission.
• Organize disparate inputs from across the organization into cohesive, engaging stories that connect our work to a larger purpose.
• Create original content, including copy, graphics, and video, that captures attention and drives engagement.
• Manage scheduling and approvals workflow, ensuring every post is on-brand, accurate, and cleared for release.
• Monitor follower interaction on comments, reshares, and social inboxes, as well as the wider external web and social ecosystem; identify reputation risks and issues to manage; resolve or escalate to resolution.
• Lead a community of practice, guiding contributors across the business so our social presence stays unified and high-quality, and our team is continually growing and improving.
• Measure channel performance and sentiment on a regular basis, and independently develop recommendations to optimize content, targeting, and engagement strategies.
• Understand our unique selling proposition and market positioning, clarifying what sets us apart in the defense and aerospace sector; position the website to deliver these messages through content strategy and site architecture.
• Improve legacy content and create new content aligned to our market position and business goals.
• Optimize content for search engine optimization (SEO), answer engine optimization (AEO), and generative engine optimization (GEO), making sure our story surfaces where audiences and AI-powered tools look for answers.
• Review and approve content submitted by a dispersed community of content creators, holding a consistent standard for quality and brand alignment.
• Manage a community of practice that supports contributors and keeps our website working as a marketing and public relations asset, while growing our team's strengths and continuously improving our approach.
• Track website performance on a regular basis and independently develop recommendations to improve user journeys and overall user experience, traffic, time on page, and overall site effectiveness.
• Understand our unique selling proposition and market positioning to guide every campaign; develop initiative or campaign proposition/positioning as delegated.
• Build strategy and tactics that influence policy and win business through targeted paid digital communication (paid social, paid search, paid display, retargeting, email campaigns), aligned to our market position and selling proposition.
• Develop campaign frameworks and creative direction that communicates value clearly and drives measurable action.
• Place campaigns in-market across the right channels and audiences.
• Manage everything going into market across the enterprise to a given audience at a given time and deconflict or drive individual ads toward enterprise ads to reduce volume and maximize impact.
• Measure performance, audience penetration, and conversion to iterate on results, and continuously improve outcomes while reducing costs.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in mass communication, marketing, journalism, public relations, communications, or English.
• At least 8 years of experience managing a digital ecosystem, including social, website, and paid digital.
• At least 5 years of people management experience leading and developing high-performing teams.
• Proven experience managing through influence in a complex, matrixed organization.
• A track record of managing people, processes, and final products on-time, on-brand, on-message, and on-budget.
• The ability to work independently on abstract challenges that require critical thinking, building solutions from scratch, presenting clear options to leadership for alignment, and driving the working group toward consensus and delivery.
• Proficiency with tools like Google Analytics 4, Google Ads, and social advertising managers.
• Ability to work on-site in Falls Church, VA four days per week.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's degree in mass communication, marketing, or journalism.
• Experience in business-to-government communications or marketing, particularly in the aerospace and defense industry.
• Familiarity with Hootsuite and Talkwalker/Lumen highly preferred, as well as Brightedge, SEMRush, Brightcove, StackAdapt, and Adobe Creative Suite.
• PCM, CDMP, or CDME certification.

Pay & Benefits

Full-Time Salary Range: $118,747 - $201,870

Individual salaries are determined by a variety of factors including business considerations, local market conditions, internal equity, and candidate qualifications.

Regular employees scheduled to work 20+ hours per week are offered: health, dental, and vision insurance; health savings accounts; a 401(k) savings plan; disability coverage; life and accident insurance; employee assistance program; legal plan; and other perks including discounts on home, auto, and pet insurance. Leave programs include paid time off, paid holidays, paid parental, military, bereavement, and applicable federal and state sick leave. Employees may participate in the company recognition program to receive monetary or non-monetary recognition awards. Other incentives may be available based on position level and/or job specifics.