Senior Member Communications Lead

Looking for former election administration PIO, communications director, senior election office staff member, or similar practitioner who can build member trust and turn election operations experience into practical communications tools.

About PLEJ

The Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions (PLEJ) is a national, nonpartisan community of support, best practices, and peer engagement among election offices serving the largest and most diverse populations in the U.S. PLEJ empowers election leaders to address operational challenges, communicate with clarity and transparency, and drive innovation. Through collaborative problem-solving and practical innovation, PLEJ helps build more resilient, efficient, and voter-focused election systems that improve the experience and confidence of millions of Americans. PLEJ is entering a critical phase of growth and impact—expanding its capacity, strengthening its institutional role, and positioning large jurisdictions as national leaders in election administration.

Position Summary

The Senior Member Communications Lead (SMCL) serves as PLEJ’s primary communications bridge to member jurisdictions and helps ensure that PLEJ’s communications work is grounded in the operational realities of election administration.

Reporting to the Senior Director of Communications and Digital Engagement, this role is designed for a communications professional with direct election administration experience—ideally a former election office public information officer, communications director, deputy election official, or senior staff member who has supported public communications in a large or complex election jurisdiction.

This role helps PLEJ understand what members are experiencing, anticipate communications needs, develop practical tools and templates, support peer exchange, and translate operational insights into clear, useful communications resources. The Senior Communications Lead also supports the Communications Workgroup and coordinates closely with the Resilience Workgroup to help convert field intelligence, scenario planning, and member needs into actionable communications strategies.

The person in this role must be able to build trust with election officials, understand the pressures of local election administration, and communicate with accuracy, humility, discretion, and nonpartisanship.

Requirements

Core Responsibilities

The SMCL sits at the intersection of election operations, member engagement, and practical communications support—ensuring that PLEJ’s communications resources reflect what election officials actually need and experience:

Member Communications and Field Engagement

• Serve as a primary communications contact for PLEJ members and member communications staff.
• Build trusted relationships with election officials, public information officers, and other member jurisdictions.
• Proactively engage members on emerging communication threats, challenges, priorities, and best practices.
• Identify issues where communications support, peer exchange, or nonpartisan resources may be helpful.
• Ensure that member perspectives and operational realities inform PLEJ communication tools and content.
• Maintain confidentiality and trust while surfacing field-level insights that can strengthen PLEJ’s work.

Communications Workgroup and Peer Exchange

• Support and help facilitate PLEJ’s Communications Workgroup in partnership with comms/program teams.
• Help design agenda topics, prep materials, document insights, convert peer discussions into practical resources.
• Help translate scenario planning, operational risks, and resilience strategies into communications guidance.
• Identify opportunities for peer-to-peer learning among election officials and communications practitioners.
• Help ensure peer conversations move beyond dialogue to implementation, tools, and shared practices.
  

Election Administration Communications Resources

• Develop publicly available, nonpartisan templates, toolkits, FAQs, explainers, and other practical resources.
• Translate complex election administration topics into clear, accurate, and actionable comms materials.
• Support communication resources related to election operations, public education, and high-interest topics.
• Work with members to identify examples, lessons learned, and operational insights to inform new resources.
• Ensure materials are practical for large offices while remaining accessible to other election offices as needed.

Operational Intelligence and Issue Spotting

• Monitor member needs, field trends, public communications challenges, and emerging operational issues.
• Surface member communications needs relevant leadership, membership, and program staff.
• Identify upcoming opportunities tied to election dates, operational milestones, events, and developments.
• Support development of rapid-response resources during high-profile, sensitive, or time-sensitive moments.
• Help ensure that PLEJ’s resources reflect uplift practical best practices that reflect the realities of large offices.

Content Development and Member-Facing Communications

• Draft member updates, newsletters, social media and digital posts, briefings, meeting materials, issue summaries, and announcements.
• Ensure external messaging accurately reflects member experiences and operational realities.
• Collaborate with the team to develop accessible, visually clear resources for members and public audiences.
• Help ensure members are prepped for media opportunities, public briefings, convenings, webinars, and peer presentations.
• Capture member stories, case studies, and examples that uplift members as election administration leaders.
• Ensure comms efforts strengthen member value, member trust, and PLEJ’s role as a practical, nonpartisan field anchor.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Work closely with the PLEJ team to support convenings, briefings, and other member-facing programming.
• Ensure comms efforts strengthen member value/trust, and PLEJ’s role as a practical, nonpartisan field anchor.
• Contribute to a culture of professionalism, humility, service, confidentiality, and nonpartisanship.
• Support broader organizational efforts and collaborate across teams to meet evolving priorities, including taking on additional responsibilities as needed that contribute to PLEJ’s mission and impact.

Qualifications

Candidate should demonstrate the following experience, skills, and leadership qualities:

Required

• 7+ years of direct experience supporting public communications in elections, public administration, public information, civic engagement, or similarly high-stakes operational environment.
• Strong understanding of election administration, including the operational pressures, timelines, public scrutiny, and communications needs of local election offices.
• Excellent writing, editing, facilitation, and relationship-building skills.
• Demonstrated ability to translate complex operational topics into clear, practical, nonpartisan resources.
• Ability to build trust with election officials, member staff, partners, and internal colleagues.
• Ability to manage sensitive information, maintain confidentiality, and exercise sound judgment.
• Ability to navigate election environments while maintaining neutrality, accuracy, and credibility.

Preferred

• Former election office public information officer, communications director, deputy election official, senior election administrator, or similar election administration practitioner.
• Experience working in or closely with a large election jurisdiction.
• Experience developing comms resources (e.g. templates, voter education materials, toolkits, FAQs, social and digital media, talking points, trainings, or public-facing election resources).
• Experience facilitating peer learning, workgroups, webinars, message and media trainings, or communities of practice.
• Experience supporting communications related to election security, combatting inaccurate information, operational resilience, crisis response, public trust, or high-profile election events.
• Experience working across coalitions, associations, member networks, or multi-jurisdictional initiatives.

Key Competencies

• Deep credibility with election officials and understanding of the practical realities of local election offices.
• Ability to build trust with members and serve as a respectful, responsive, and proactive comms partner.
• Strong writing and translation skills, especially for complex operational or technical subjects.
• Ability to identify member needs and convert field insights into useful communications resources.
• Strong facilitation skills and ability to support peer-to-peer exchange and implementation.
• Sound judgment in sensitive, high-pressure, or politically charged environments.
• Commitment to nonpartisanship, confidentiality, service, and operational accuracy.
• Ability to collaborate across communications, programs, resilience, and member engagement functions.

Key Outcomes (First 1–2 Years)

• Stronger Member Communications Support: PLEJ members have clearer, more practical, and more timely communications resources that help them communicate with voters, partners, media, and the public.
• Trusted Member Relationships: PLEJ has deeper relationships with member communications staff, public information officers, and election leaders across large jurisdictions.
• Effective Communications Workgroup Support: The Communications Workgroup becomes a more active source of peer learning, shared resources, field intelligence, and implementation support.
• Operationally Grounded Communications Products: PLEJ’s public-facing and member-facing communications better reflect the real-world complexity of election administration.
• Improved Rapid Response Readiness: PLEJ can more quickly identify member needs and develop practical communications resources during high-profile or sensitive moments.
• Stronger Field-to-Strategy Feedback Loop: Member insights more consistently inform PLEJ’s narrative strategy, public education resources, partner engagement, and organizational priorities.

Benefits

Compensation & Location

• Salary range: $113,890.00 – $136,082.00 , commensurate with experience.
• Location: Flexible, with regular travel for staff meetings, member convenings, and national engagement (up to 30%).
• PLEJ is a fully remote team. This role must be located and performed within the United States and be online and available between the hours of 9a and 5p ET, regardless of where candidate lives.
• Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States at the time of hire.
• Benefits: PLEJ offers a generous benefits package including:
• Fully covered medical, dental, vision, short-term and long-term disability, and term life insurance premiums for the employee (employee’s family may be added at employee’s expense)
• Unlimited PTO
• 14 observed holidays and generous holiday schedule
• 401(k) retirement plan

The Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions (PLEJ) is a 501(c)(3) nonpartisan, nonprofit organization committed to providing a community of support to election jurisdictions nationwide.

PLEJ is an equal opportunity employer. Employees and job applicants are protected from discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, parental status, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, political affiliation, military service, or other non-merit-based factors. These protections apply to all employment decisions, including recruitment, hiring, performance evaluations, promotions, training, and career development. Additionally, PLEJ provides employees and applicants reasonable accommodations for disabilities; for pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions; and for religious beliefs, observances, and practices.

This job description is intended to outline the general scope and responsibilities of the position and may be subject to updates based on organizational needs. It does not constitute a contract of employment.