Senior Specialist, Public Relations and External Communications (Remote)

Join Axon and be a Force for Good.

At Axon, we’re on a mission to Protect Life. We’re explorers, pursuing society’s most critical safety and justice issues with our ecosystem of devices and cloud software. Like our products, we work better together. We connect with candor and care, seeking out diverse perspectives from our customers, communities and each other.

Life at Axon is fast-paced, challenging and meaningful. Here, you’ll take ownership and drive real change. Constantly grow as you work hard for a mission that matters at a company where you matter.

Reporting directly to the VP of Global Corporate Communications and serving as an integral member of the communications team, the Senior Specialist of Public Relations and External Communications will be responsible for supporting the strategy of Axon’s brand public relations efforts, including external communications and positioning, media relations and execution of our owned content strategy.

The ideal candidate will bring deep experience across communications disciplines, with a focus on external communications and reputation management. The ideal individual should be energized to help build and evolve plans to support the growing needs of the communications function within Axon and bring a strategic “thinker and doer” attitude to roll up their sleeves and support the team in delivering compelling and creative communications campaigns to drive our overall mission and thought leadership at Axon in pursuit of our mission. If you thrive in a fast-paced setting and can think on your toes toward quick solutions and innovative storylines, this role would be a great fit for you!

What You’ll Do
Corporate Communications & Reputation Strategy

• Establish and manage the process for all communications announcements via a communications editorial calendar. Identify a new standard for the way we communicate various topics to ensure consistency across the business in partnership with our media relations and content leads.
• Work closely with the VP of Global Corporate Communications to implement standards and best practices for communications campaigns and tactics across the function.
• Support our brand journalism focus by directly generating content for both owned, earned and paid channels, supporting efforts to generate press releases, media pitches, owned content and sponsored content in close partnership with content and media relations leads across the team.
• Mine for opportunities, insights and storylines externally to both share across the organization and keep key executives informed of trends in the media, as well as identifying opportunities from these insights to drive new storylines, potential campaigns and content ideas. Execute content based on these opportunities.
• Responsible and accountable for connecting dots within the organization to understand the overall newsflow and prioritized areas of focus to deliver the overall Axon story cohesively.
• Support the press release process across communications function, ensuring appropriate reviews and messaging are in line with expectations of the organization.
• Identify above brand opportunities for thought leadership and external communications, identifying key outlets to target, controlled and sponsored media tactics and the narrative for advancing our paid/controlled communications strategies (i.e. sponsored content, op-eds, bylines etc.)
• Manage key vendors in support of advancing the team’s priorities and manage budget to help deliver corporate reputation and corporate communications led campaigns.
• Establish a monitoring protocol and process for measuring ROI of Public Relations initiatives across the company to provide more consistent updates to our executives on opportunities and outputs of the team. Systemize this approach with a standard process for all announcements, campaigns and in providing insights back on the external landscape.
• Assist in advancing the leadership profile of Axon, implementing plans that expand executive communications, speaking opportunities and thought leadership platforms through earned and paid media.

What You Bring 

• 5-7 years’ experience of external communications experience, either in-house or agency experience. Blended experience of agency/client-side and/or in-house in a high-growth company preferred.
• Strong writing skills a must. prior experience in journalism role or a role with a focus on content generation preferred. Must be familiar with press release and editorial/journalistic styles, as well as consistently adhered to Associated Press format (AP) style when building materials.
• Strong organizational skills a must, past project management experience preferred. This role will work across various functions to put process in place and requires someone