Communications Specialist

Responsibilities

• Develop original content and coordinate a full spectrum of communication products: news articles, presentations, administrative memos, reports, external reviews, social media, stakeholder briefings and multimedia content.
• Provide comprehensive editing services for large and/or complex deliverables. This includes editorial development of materials, including revisions and notes on errors of logic, gaps in arguments, coherence of presentation and consistency of terminology. You will also review for compliance with information security requirements.
• Partner with DDST team members to define communication strategies, messaging, audiences and key deliverables for a variety of specialized projects to meet programmatic objectives.
• Support short- and long-term communications planning by developing key assets, managing complex project schedules, tracking resources and coordinating work across teams for large-scale production jobs, often collaborating with editors, designers, photographers and web strategists.
• Assess incremental input and manuscript iterations in addition to developing communication styles for complex technical and possibly sensitive material.
• Collaborate and interact with all levels of administrative, management, scientific and technical staff and team members to understand, define, develop and establish objectives to form editorial requirements for complex projects. Schedule and lead planning and status meetings to keep communication channels open and projects on track.
• Contribute to the evaluation and implementation of new tools, technologies and processes; help develop/track metrics and process improvement methods.
• Serve as quality check through interactions with the Print Plant, designers or multimedia professionals on complex production jobs.
• Work independently to perform a variety of other duties as assigned and be able to handle both heavy and light workloads intermittently.

Requirements

• Ability to secure and maintain a U.S. DOE Q-level security clearance, which requires U.S. citizenship.
• Bachelor’s degree in English, communications or journalism or the equivalent combination of education and experience in an area of scientific or technical communication.
• Experience as a scientific and/or technical editor/writer.
• Advanced written and verbal communication skills. Demonstrated success partnering with all levels of an organization to deliver polished, high-impact content that advances institutional priorities.
• Extensive experience editing and writing across multiple scientific and technical areas, applying advanced technical communication principles, professional writing standards and style conventions. Demonstrated ability to incorporate editorial feedback and refine work through iterative review, including experience both editing others’ work and having one’s own work critically reviewed and revised.
• Ability to handle unclassified, sensitive and confidential issues with tact, diplomacy and discretion.
• Demonstrated self-starter, comfortable multitasking with the ability to work to deadlines and respond to tight schedules in a rapidly changing environment and attend to intense details with high consequence of error. Effective interpersonal skills and ability to work independently under minimal direction within a team environment.
• Experience with Microsoft Office 365 (Teams, Sharepoint/OneDrive, Word, PowerPoint, Excel), Adobe InDesign and familiarity with design and content management systems.
• Formal project management experience leading complex production and technical writing and editing assignments; in-depth knowledge of multiple digital and paper-driven production processes.
• Experience evaluating and implementing new tools, technologies, and processes, including tracking performance metrics and leveraging AI for ideation and workflow optimization.